Telegram’s t.me removed from global DNS after server hold

Montenegro’s .me registry operator doMEn placed Telegram’s shortlink domain t.me on “server hold” on July 13, removing the name from the global domain name system. The change caused every t.me lookup to return NXDOMAIN, the response for an address not found.

Registry records show t.me is paid through May 2035, so a simple expiration does not explain the outage. A registry-level “server hold” prevents a domain from being published in the global DNS, which stops lookups from resolving.

The .me country-code domain is operated by doMEn and uses backend providers including Identity Digital and GoDaddy. Early cooperation between the registry and Telegram made t.me the standard shortlink for usernames and channels, and t.me/username and t.me/channel links are widely embedded across the web.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov posted on X during the outage: “Hey @domainME, t.me links stopped working. Can you look into it?” He also posted that the company received no advance notice of the registry action.

The Telegram app continued to function, but invite links, channel URLs embedded on websites, pinned social posts and many bots that onboard users via t.me links stopped working worldwide. Services that rely on those links reported broken onboarding flows and dead invite links.

At the time of reporting, doMEn, Identity Digital and Telegram had not published a joint explanation for the suspension. Authorities or the registry had not cited a reason.

Possible explanations include a legal or regulatory order, a registry policy action, or an administrative error; no official cause has been identified. Recent legal scrutiny of Pavel Durov in France has been reported, but no connection between that matter and the domain suspension has been established.

Telegram reports roughly one billion monthly active users. The company is expanding its crypto wallet and has announced plans to add tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs through partners including Kraken and Backed, making restoration of t.me links consequential for services that use those links.

A server hold must be applied by the registry, which indicates the suspension was imposed at the registry level rather than resulting from a registration lapse. Users and services that depend on t.me links are awaiting statements that would explain the reason for the hold and provide a timeline for restoration.