Qubic Claims Majority Control of Monero Hashrate, Raising 51% Attack Fears

Qubic, a venture led by former IOTA co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo, says it has secured greater than 51% of Monero’s international hashrate, a milestone that, if true, provides it the power to reorganize blocks, censor transactions, and try double-spends on the privacy-focused blockchain.

Ivancheglo framed the transfer as a stress take a look at to assist the Monero group put together for future community threats, however the announcement has triggered sharp debate amongst builders and safety specialists.

A 51% assault happens when a single entity or coordinated group controls a majority of a proof-of-work community’s hashrate. Ethereum Classic suffered a number of reorganizations in 2020, leading to hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in losses, whereas Bitcoin Gold confronted related assaults in 2018 and 2020.

Smaller networks like Verge have additionally been focused, demonstrating how concentrated hashing energy can destabilize and full cryptocurrency community.

Monero, which makes use of the CPU-friendly RandomX algorithm, has lengthy prided itself on resisting ASIC centralization. Qubic’s “useful proof-of-work” (uPoW) mannequin repurposes Monero mining rewards by changing XMR into USDT, then utilizing the proceeds to purchase and burn QUBIC tokens, a deflationary mechanism that doubles as a liquidity sink for its personal ecosystem.

From mid-May to late July, Qubic’s share of the community jumped from lower than 2% to over 25%, at occasions topping pool rankings.

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet warned on X that Monero “appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack,” citing indicators of a significant chain reorganization, with a number of different trade specialists like SlowMist founder Yu Xian expressing their doubt over Qubic’s economics.

Whether the occasions mark a hostile takeover or just a stress take a look at, XMR has responded negatively, dropping by 6.65% up to now 24 hours to compound a 16% decline over the previous week.

Read extra: How $330M BTC Hacker May Have Doubled Down on Monero Derivatives