On Monday, August 11, 2025, history was made when the Qubic protocol successfully completed its attempt to dominate the Monero network.

After a month of high-risk technical confrontation, Qubic achieved 51% dominance of Monero's hash rate, successfully reorganizing the blockchain. This event marks a crucial moment in the cryptocurrency industry, serving as the final validation of Qubic's "Outsourced Computations" and "Useful Proof of Work" (UPoW) models.

What is Qubic?

Qubic was created with a purpose: to host a fully on-chain and decentralized AI model, AIGarth. For this, the chain was designed to be extremely lightweight, utilizing the RAM of its validators. It operates as its own operating system, features the innovative quorum consensus, and has the capability to utilize mining power for other purposes, rather than wasting it on simple hashes (Useful Proof of Work). Becoming the fastest and most certified blockchain in the world, with 15 million transactions per second, was not the primary objective, but a byproduct of the architecture.

As part of its Useful Proof of Work project, Qubic needed to implement the first stage of Outsourced Computations and test it in practice.

The Experiment

The Monero mining initiative began as a proof of concept. In its initial phase, Qubic divided its resources between mining Monero and training its AI, AIGarth. This approach proved highly profitable. At one point, it became almost three times more profitable than direct Monero mining and also attracted a torrent of new computational power to the network.

The experiment was a strategic, and sometimes combative, application of game theory. The Qubic community, through a decisive vote, chose to restructure its reward mechanism, moving from token buybacks to direct rewards for the Computors (Qubic chain validators). This change served as a powerful economic incentive that attracted miners from other Monero pools, driving the acquisition movement.

The Process

The path to Monday's success was a two-part battle. The first attempt to achieve a pure 51% hashrate dominance was met with strong resistance, including a continuous DDoS attack that Qubic's infrastructure withstood for over a week. This "hacker war" highlighted the resilience of Qubic's decentralized network, which remained operational despite interruptions in peripheral services.

The final and successful effort began on August 11 with the implementation of a more sophisticated Selfish Mining strategy. This technical tactic, which proved effective with slightly less than and sometimes more than 51% of the total hashrate, involved the Qubic pool secretly mining blocks and withholding them. The sudden appearance of orphan blocks on the Monero network in the days leading up to today was the telltale sign that Qubic's strategy was working. This tactic allowed the Qubic pool to gain a disproportionate share of the block rewards and, ultimately, the network's consensus.

That said, the team decided not to take over the protocol's consensus for now due to internal discussions on whether this would harm Monero's price. An independent data scientist will verify the facts listed in this article.

And now?

With the acquisition test completed, the core functionality of the Monero network remains intact. Its privacy, speed, and usability have not been compromised. However, the ultimate goal is that the security of the Monero protocol is guaranteed by Qubic miners. This way, rewards would be channeled to Qubic pools, generating greater profitability and creating a new scenario of higher incentives for Monero miners.

This historic event is a testament to the power of economic incentives and the ability of a smaller protocol to overcome a much larger one. The Qubic experiment successfully proved three crucial theories:

* Outsourced computations are viable: Qubic's UPoW model is a proven and real technology capable of redirecting computing power to external tasks.

* Incentives dictate consensus: any Proof of Work blockchain can be attacked and controlled by providing superior economic incentives to its miners.

* Infrastructure resilience: the decentralized network of Qubic has demonstrated a remarkable ability to withstand and recover from sophisticated and sustained network attacks.

In a move that rewrote the rules of competition in blockchain, an AI protocol with a market value of $300 million successfully asserted its dominance over a privacy giant with a market value of $6 billion. The implications of this event will reverberate throughout the cryptocurrency industry, providing a model for future interactions between protocols and a clear reminder that, in decentralized systems, economic incentives are the final arbiter of power.