Monero had an intense August. Qubic founder Sergey “CFB” Ivancheglo and his uPoW are trying to break through and maintain the 51% threshold of the Monero (XMR) blockchain’s hashrate.
This strategy seems to be working, at least temporarily.
Announced at the end of July, Qubic’s plan is clear: promote its new blockchain by attacking Monero. Its strategy consists of organizing mining “marathons” to cross the 51% threshold and then maintain it until August 31. The stated goal of Ivancheglo (aka CFB), founder of Qubic, is to test Monero’s robustness, both economically and technically.
In the last few hours, Qubic, the Monero mining pool on the rival network, has reportedly managed to gain the upper hand, at times exceeding 51% of the hashrate, allowing Qubic to direct block production and “orphan,” or reject, blocks from other pools.
At this stage, there is no indication that a major reorganization has taken place, and the confidentiality of the Monero blockchain does not allow us to determine whether double spending may have occurred.
However, according to the Monero Consensus website, the Qubic pool mined seven blocks in a row, four of which were empty.
Initially, the attackers chose to only mimic empty blocks, slowing down the confirmation time for user transactions. But the Qubic camp has changed its mind on this point and says it will no longer mine empty blocks so as not to degrade the user experience. This attack highlights the impact that a 51% attack can have and, above all, that the Monero blockchain is not so resilient to this type of offensive.
Indeed, this attack is being carried out by a fledgling community and a blockchain with a token capitalization of less than $500 million. In contrast, Monero is backed by an established network, one of the most determined communities in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and a token (XMR) with a capitalization of nearly $5 billion.
Monero’s price has fallen 18% since the attack began, a decline that could accelerate if the attack gains momentum. Qubic’s price is also down, by about 10%, despite a nearly 85% increase since the attack was announced in early July.
