Qubic, a cryptocurrency project spearheaded by former IOTA co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo, has announced a controversial achievement: controlling over 51% of Monero’s global hashrate. This audacious claim, if verified, grants Qubic the technical capability to orchestrate a 51% attack on the privacy-focused blockchain, enabling it to reorganize transaction blocks, censor activity, and potentially execute double-spends. The announcement has sent ripples of concern through the crypto community, reigniting long-standing anxieties about network security.
Ivancheglo presented this significant concentration of power as a “stress test,” purportedly designed to fortify the Monero network against future threats. However, this justification has been met with considerable skepticism from leading developers and security experts. Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger, voiced immediate alarm on X (formerly Twitter), suggesting Monero was “in the midst of a successful 51% attack,” while SlowMist founder Yu Xian expressed doubts regarding the economic rationale behind Qubic’s strategy.
A 51% attack represents a critical vulnerability in proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains. It occurs when a single entity or a coordinated group gains control of more than half of the network’s total computational power, or hashrate. This dominance allows the attacker to manipulate the blockchain by preventing new transactions from being confirmed, reversing completed transactions (leading to double-spending), and effectively halting network operations. Historical precedents include Ethereum Classic suffering multiple reorganizations in 2020, resulting in millions of dollars in losses, and Bitcoin Gold facing similar assaults in 2018 and 2020. Even smaller networks like Verge have been targeted, illustrating the disruptive potential of concentrated hashing power.
Monero has traditionally prided itself on its resilience to such centralization, thanks to its CPU-friendly RandomX mining algorithm, designed to deter the dominance of specialized Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). Qubic’s unique “useful proof-of-work” (uPoW) model adds another layer to this unfolding narrative. The project converts Monero (XMR) mining rewards into Tether (USDT), which are then used to purchase and burn QUBIC tokens. This deflationary mechanism serves as a liquidity sink for the Qubic ecosystem. Data from mid-May to late July shows Qubic’s share of the Monero network’s hashrate surged dramatically, from less than 2% to over 25%, at times even topping mining pool rankings.
Whether this development is a genuine stress test or a more aggressive maneuver, the market’s reaction has been unequivocally negative. Monero’s native token, XMR, saw a 6,65% decline in the 24 hours following the claim, compounding a 16% drop over the past week. The situation underscores the delicate balance of decentralization and security that underpins proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, leaving the Monero community to grapple with the implications of this new and significant challenge.
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