Dogecoin Next Target After 51% Attack on Monero
It's the ultimate horror scenario for any Proof-of-Work blockchain: one party gains more than half the network hashrate and so takes control over block production.
It is the ultimate horror scenario for any Proof-of-Work blockchain: one party gains more than half of the network hashrate and thus takes control of block production. For networks like Bitcoin, that would be an existential threat if it's a malicious attack.
Exactly that happened last week to the privacy coin Monero. A mining faction managed to reach 51% of the hashrate and temporarily disrupted block production. According to those involved, it was mainly a show of power. The culprit: the AI-focused crypto project Qubic.
Qubic presented the attack as proof of the strength of their customized consensus mechanism, called Useful Proof of Work, an extension of classic PoW. “The Monero mining initiative started as a proof-of-concept,” the team said.
An initial attempt stalled due to “strong resistance,” including a weeks-long DDoS attack that Qubic's infrastructure withstood. The breakthrough came on August 11, when they deployed a refined Selfish Mining strategy. In this approach, the Qubic mining pool secretly withheld blocks, causing suddenly more orphaned blocks to appear in the Monero network. The result: a disproportionately large share of block rewards and, temporarily, even control over network consensus.
Yet Qubic decided not to fully seize the protocol — in their own words, also to avoid market shocks. Meanwhile Kraken, the crypto exchange, reacted by proactively pausing Monero trading.
According to Qubic, the attack is not a threat but an opportunity. “The ultimate goal is to ensure the Monero protocol's security is safeguarded by Qubic miners. That would route block rewards through Qubic pools, increasing profitability and creating new incentives for Monero miners.”
And it doesn't end there. Sergey Ivancheglo, founder of Qubic, posted on X that Dogecoin is the next target. For the first memecoin and its community, that may sound concerning — but according to Qubic, this could also create positive incentives for miners in the long run.
