Self-described “decentralized compute and AI Layer 1 protocol” Qubic has the Monero neighborhood fearful.
In what’s being described as an “economic attack,” Qubic is providing increased charges, paid in its personal token, to XMR miners keen to affix its pool.
As its share of the overall hashrate climbs, the privacy-focused neighborhood feels threatened by this seemingly parasitic relationship, and its potential to trigger a breakdown within the community’s safety mannequin.
🧵 Monero is underneath assault. Not via bugs or exploits.
That is an financial assault. Via incentives. Via miners.They don’t seem to be hacking your privateness — they’re shopping for it.Right here’s what’s occurring and why it issues: 👇 pic.twitter.com/jUMGZoB9TF
— ddadybayo (@ddadybayo) July 27, 2025
The motivation mechanism that Qubic makes use of to build up hash fee depends on paying miners in QUBIC tokens then promoting the mined XMR to buy-back and burn QUBIC, pumping its worth.
The elevated worth attracts in additional miners; rinse and repeat.
Qubic’s share of the Monero community’s complete hashrate presently sits at 25%, in keeping with knowledge from MiningPoolStats, and is up from 21% lower than two weeks in the past.
At 51% of hash energy, a pool may theoretically orphan blocks (to punish non-Qubic miners), manipulate transactions and even power protocol modifications.
Beforehand, miners would self-limit their total hash energy with the intention to keep confidence within the community.
These actions would, after all, destroy confidence within the XMR protocol and miners have averted accumulating elevated shares of hash energy previously. This time, although, some concern that Qubic doesn’t have “a vesting [sic] interest in Monero itself. Qubic is like a predator: if it kills its prey, it will simply switch to another one.”
Whereas some could also be involved a couple of “vampire attack” on the community, others could merely be fearful about their baggage; the fixed promoting of XMR for QUBIC may result in a collapse in Monero’s token.
Regardless of the fast accumulation of XMR hashpower, QUBIC’s token worth stays down over 80% from its all-time-high set in March final yr.
Qubic’s founder, Sergey Ivancheglo (a.okay.a. CFB) insists he’s “trying to find a countermeasure to Qubic’s 51% domination.”
Ivancheglo feels that is for the higher good within the case of a “non-benevolent attack,” regardless of additionally suggesting that Qubic will quickly cease reporting their hashrate to community monitoring dashboards.
He additionally appears open about his plans for “51% domination” and calls these fearful about XMR “fear-mongers who want to buy cheap XMR”. He additionally accuses “Monero botnet masters” of DDoS-ing the Qubic pool.
“Please, do not resist”, he provides.
Qubic’s docs paint their efforts in a unique gentle, nonetheless. They describe their mining pool as an enchancment to the wasteful nature of conventional blockchain mechanics, not an invading power.
Their helpful proof of labor (UPoW) system is designed for “processing large datasets or training machine learning models,” slightly than fixing arbitrary mathematical puzzles.
“The work done by the Computors isn’t just for maintaining network security but also contributes to real-world applications and services.”
Are different networks in danger?
Some have signalled that Monero’s present predicament might be a foreshadowing of a possible “purely economic attack” that will face Bitcoin in years to return, urging the neighborhood to study from these “key insights into economic incentive troubles.”
Ethereum neighborhood members have identified that, underneath a proof of stake mannequin, “social consensus can slash stake, it can’t slash [PoW] mining rigs.”
Any validator making an attempt to take over the community would lose out financially, a safeguard not current in PoW techniques. As ETH maxi Anthony Sassano places it: “Economic security is real and it’s why Ethereum has optimized for it.”
