Written by: Amin Ayan
Translated by: Saoirse, Foresight News
Days after successfully controlling the majority of Monero (XMR) network hash power, the Qubic community voted to target Dogecoin (DOGE) for the next 51% attack.
Key points:
After claiming control of the majority of Monero's network hash power, the Qubic community voted to focus their next goal on Dogecoin.
The attack on Monero forced Kraken Exchange to suspend its deposit operations, raising concerns about the security of Proof of Work (PoW).
Experts disagree on whether Qubic's attack means it has fully controlled the network, but the risks of censoring transactions and rewriting the blockchain still exist.
Sergey Ivancheglo, the founder of Qubic (known outside the crypto circle as "Come-from-Beyond"), posed a question to the project community: Which next Proof of Work (PoW) project supporting ASIC miners should be targeted?
Candidate options include Dogecoin (DOGE), Kaspa (KAS), and Zcash (ZEC). Ivancheglo confirmed the voting results in a post on the X platform on Sunday: "The Qubic community chose Dogecoin."
Dogecoin wins Qubic vote, with support from over 300 community members
Dogecoin, with a market capitalization of over $35 billion, received more than 300 votes, surpassing the total number of votes for other candidate coins.
Last week, Qubic announced that it had gained control of the majority of Monero's hash power, a news that shocked the entire cryptocurrency industry.
After a month-long battle with Monero miners, Qubic's pool successfully reorganized 6 blocks. According to MiningPoolStats data, as of the time of this writing, the pool's hash power is about 2.32 GH/s, making it the most powerful pool in the Monero network.
Following this "takeover," Qubic emphasized that the core functions of Monero (including privacy and transaction speed) were unaffected, but added that its "ultimate goal" is to ensure that Qubic miners provide security for Monero.
This attack forced Kraken Exchange to temporarily suspend Monero deposit operations, citing "potential risks to network integrity."
Monero's withdrawal and trading operations were unaffected; it is expected that once the exchange determines the network has stabilized, deposit operations will resume.
When asked about the reasons behind the attack, Ivancheglo wrote on the X platform: "A lot of electricity is wasted on meaningless Proof of Work (PoW), we need to use this electricity for artificial intelligence (AI)."
He added, "These words may sound difficult to understand right now, and I cannot reveal more at this time, but in the future everyone will ultimately understand."
Although Qubic claims this incident proves it has fully taken over the Monero network, Monero developers refute this.
Luke Parker, chief developer of SeraiDEX, believes that the reorganization of 6 blocks does not definitively prove this was a successful 51% attack, but only indicates that "the attacker with a large hash power got lucky."
However, there are also many differing opinions. Zhong Chenming, co-founder of the cybersecurity company Slow Mist Technology, stated that this attack "appears to have been successful" and warned that theoretically, the Qubic mining pool can now rewrite the blockchain and censor any transactions.
This confrontation began in late June when Qubic announced it would repurpose its Proof of Work model initially used for artificial intelligence-related tasks for Monero mining.
Monero (XMR) obtained through mining will be used for the repurchase and destruction of Qubic tokens, thereby creating a direct economic incentive to drive Qubic to control the Monero network.
Impact on Proof of Work (PoW)
Qubic's expansion plans have raised new concerns about Proof of Work cryptocurrencies. By targeting well-known networks like Dogecoin, the project is testing the risk resilience of some of the most established blockchains in the cryptocurrency space.
"51% attack" refers to a single entity controlling the majority of the network's mining power, thereby enabling double spending and block reorganization.
Although Dogecoin's scale is much larger than Monero's and the difficulty of the attack is greater, the Qubic community's vote clearly indicates their intent to attempt.
Dogecoin, as one of the most well-known meme coins and a top ten digital asset by market capitalization, could trigger a chain reaction across the entire cryptocurrency market if its network becomes chaotic.
