The global blocking of Telegram's short links in the t.me format has become a reality. Since July 13, 2026, these links have stopped opening in browsers worldwide. Unlike the Telegram app itself and backup domains (telegram.me, telegram.org), which continue to work, the problem turned out to be deeper—at the domain registry level.

Telegram's founder, Pavel Durov, has publicly appealed to the administration of the .me domain zone to investigate the situation. The company did not receive any prior notifications, indicating a sudden and possibly external nature of the block.

What exactly happened?

The cause of the outage is not in Telegram's infrastructure. The t.me domain received a serverHold status in the .me zone registry. This EPP code completely excludes the domain from global DNS resolution, returning an NXDOMAIN error for any query. WHOIS data confirms: the domain now carries eight status flags, including serverHold, clientDeleteProhibited, and serverDeleteProhibited. The last record update dates to July 13, 2026—the exact date the outage began.

Importantly: serverHold is set only by the registry (in this case, Identity Digital, which manages the .me zone) and takes priority over any settings from the registrar or DNS provider. This is not a registration error: the domain's validity is extended until 2035, and the name servers still point to Google's cloud infrastructure.

Possible causes: sanctions or judicial pressure?

There are no official explanations. However, two versions are circulating on social media:

  • Sanctions context. On the same day, July 13, OFAC (the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control) published a press release adding the service First VPN Service to the sanctions list. Among the listed addresses is t.me/FirstVPNService. A direct link between the sanctions and the domain block has not been proven, but the coincidence of dates is alarming.
  • Legal pressure. The suspension coincided with Durov's fourth interrogation by French investigators in a case related to his arrest in August 2024. However, there is no evidence of a direct connection to a specific legal proceeding.

Telegram's response and consequences for TON

The platform has already begun technically bypassing the issue: when copying links to chats, channels, and profiles, URLs in the telegram.me format are now generated instead of t.me. However, the backup domain is in the same .me zone, which does not guarantee its protection from a similar action by the registry.

The scale of the outage is colossal. t.me is the primary tool for distributing addresses of accounts, channels, stickers, and bots. For the crypto market, the situation has proven particularly sensitive. Through these links, over a billion Telegram users access the platform's wallet, TON blockchain mini-apps, and collectible usernames. The outage has cut off the primary user entry point into the ecosystem of the GRAM token, valued at approximately $4.3 billion.

Specifically, Telegram's custodial wallet, launched via t.me/wallet, allows users to buy, store, and transfer assets (USDT, Bitcoin, Gram). The domain block has temporarily paralyzed this functionality for web users.

Cryptalist expert opinion: The situation with t.me is a wake-up call for the entire decentralized TON ecosystem. The dependence of critical infrastructure (wallets, dApps) on a centralized domain registry creates a vulnerability that regulators can exploit. Recovery could take from several hours to several days, depending on the nature of the registry's claims. At the time of publication, the serverHold status has not been lifted, and there are no official comments.