The mining pool Qubic has announced the successful execution of a 51% attack on the Monero network, allowing the team to gain control over more than half of the system’s hash rate. Reports indicate that Qubic’s share of the total Monero hash rate reached over 53%, creating a potential opportunity for rewriting blocks, censoring transactions, and even implementing double spending.
This is reported by Finway
Details of the Attack and Community Reaction
The announcement of the attack was made by SlowMist founder Yu Xian. He noted that the Qubic pool achieved a significant hash rate share, peaking at 52.36%. There are reports circulating in the network that this figure even exceeded 53%, with Qubic’s total hash rate amounting to 2.65 GH/s. However, some community members express doubts about the accuracy of this data and claim that the actual figures may be lower.
“The Qubic team can now theoretically rewrite the blockchain, execute double spending, and censor any transactions. At the same time, the economic feasibility of such an attack remains questionable due to significant costs.”
Qubic’s head and co-founder of IOTA, Sergey Ivanchiglo, emphasized that the main goal of this initiative is an “economic demonstration,” and the team does not plan any malicious actions against the Monero network. According to the likely head of Qubic’s Core developers, using the pseudonym dkat, the pool had at least three opportunities to conduct a reorganization of up to 10 blocks but decided to refrain from destructive actions.
Cost of the Attack and Market Implications
The financial aspect of the experiment raises significant interest: according to Ledger’s CTO Charles Guillemet, maintaining such a hash rate share in Monero costs approximately $75 million per day. Guillemet also noted that Monero has limited options for addressing this issue, and a complete network takeover remains a very realistic scenario.
Some experts, including lead developer of SeraiDEX Luke Parker and user tuxsudo, doubt the absolute success of the attack, pointing to the absence of blocks from other miners in the event of Qubic’s full control and the suspicious disconnection of the hash rate API by the pool’s team.
According to MiningPoolStats, the two largest Monero mining pools processed a combined 44 out of the last 100 blocks, indicating a concentration of computational power in the network:
Qubic uses economic incentives to attract miners: participants are rewarded with QUBIC tokens, mined XMR is exchanged for stablecoins, and then for QUBIC. This helps maintain a stable economic ecosystem and a high level of the pool’s hash rate.
Following the news of the 51% attack, the XMR price on exchanges dropped by 8%:
At the same time, the price of the QUBIC token showed a 4% increase over the day:
The experiment to control the Monero network is planned to conclude by the end of August 2025. The subsequent actions of the Qubic team and the community’s reaction remain under close scrutiny by cryptocurrency market experts.