The privacy-focused Monero blockchain has suffered a 51% assault, which means the community just isn’t managed by a single entity. XMR dropped simply shy of 9% after builders flagged the occasion.
On Aug. 12, Sergey Ivancheglo, recognized within the crypto neighborhood as “Come-from-Past” (CFB), claimed on X that Qubic had surpassed 51% of Monero’s community hash fee, saying:
“Appears like Qubic has achieved 51% over Monero, we’re ready for unbiased confirmations.”
Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet later confirmed the declare, stating that Qubic now controls most of Monero’s computing energy.
He famous:
“Different miners are left with no incentive to proceed, as Qubic can merely orphan any competing blocks, successfully turning into the only real miner.”
He warned that the group’s dominance may allow large-scale blockchain rewrites, double-spending, and transaction censorship.
Guillemet estimated the operation prices round $75 million per day however famous it may nonetheless be worthwhile, at the least within the quick time period.
The Ledger CTO concluded that the assault had allowed a smaller chain to overhaul a high 30 crypto tokens. He wrote:
“In impact, a $300 million market-cap chain is taking up a $6 billion one. Monero’s choices for restoration are restricted, and a full takeover is now doable and even seemingly.”
Nonetheless, CFB claimed that the takeover of the privacy-focused community was designed to organize it in opposition to future assaults of such nature.
In keeping with him:
“The Monero workforce is sharpening particulars of their 51% assault safety. Many accused us of being sponsored by 3-letter companies to assault this anon coin. What do you suppose now, after we has helped Monero to organize for its future fights in opposition to these companies.”
How Qubic gained management of Monero
Qubic’s technique revolved round an incentive-driven “pay-to-switch” mining marketing campaign.
By providing considerably greater payouts than common Monero mining swimming pools, the Monero mining pool attracted sufficient contributors to surpass the 51% threshold.
Information from Chaos Labs exhibits Monero’s hash fee climbing to three.01 GH/s as miners chased rewards of $3.13 per day in comparison with $0.64 from customary swimming pools. Over the previous 30 days, Qubic’s exercise contributed to a 28% drop in XMR’s value over the previous month, whereas QUBIC tokens surged 57%.
In the meantime, Qubic’s mannequin additionally includes distributing half its mining earnings to taking part miners and utilizing the opposite half to buy and burn QUBIC tokens.
So, if the challenge mines 100% of Monero’s day by day blocks, it yields round 432 XMR, price roughly $118,000 at present costs, with $59,000 burned day by day.
Given Monero’s privateness focus, there may be some debate about whether or not Qubic actually achieved the 51% goal. The community’s construction makes it doable to obfuscate hashrate possession, although CFB, a developer at Qubic, confirmed the hashrate quota. Stealth hashrate gained’t present on public dashboards that label possession.
