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

18 hours ago

Qubic, a task led by erstwhile IOTA co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo, says it has secured much than 51% of Monero’s planetary hashrate, a milestone that, if true, gives it the quality to reorganize blocks, censor transactions, and effort double-spends connected the privacy-focused blockchain.

Ivancheglo framed the determination arsenic a accent trial to assistance the Monero assemblage hole for aboriginal web threats, but the announcement has triggered crisp statement among developers and information experts.

A 51% onslaught occurs erstwhile a azygous entity oregon coordinated radical controls a bulk of a proof-of-work network’s hashrate. Ethereum Classic suffered aggregate reorganizations successful 2020, resulting successful millions of dollars successful losses, portion Bitcoin Gold faced akin assaults successful 2018 and 2020.

Smaller networks similar Verge person besides been targeted, demonstrating however concentrated hashing powerfulness tin destabilize and full cryptocurrency network.

Monero, which uses the CPU-friendly RandomX algorithm, has agelong prided itself connected resisting ASIC centralization. Qubic’s “useful proof-of-work” (uPoW) exemplary repurposes Monero mining rewards by converting XMR into USDT, past utilizing the proceeds to bargain and pain QUBIC tokens, a deflationary mechanics that doubles arsenic a liquidity descend for its ain ecosystem.

From mid-May to precocious July, Qubic’s stock of the web jumped from little than 2% to implicit 25%, astatine times topping excavation rankings.

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet warned connected X that Monero “appears to beryllium successful the midst of a palmy 51% attack,” citing signs of a large concatenation reorganization, with respective different manufacture experts similar SlowMist laminitis Yu Xian expressing their uncertainty implicit Qubic’s economics.

Whether the events people a hostile takeover oregon simply a accent test, XMR has responded negatively, dropping by 6.65% successful the past 24 hours to compound a 16% diminution implicit the past week.

Read more: How $330M BTC Hacker May Have Doubled Down connected Monero Derivatives

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