Qubic achieves 51% control of the Monero coin network.

Author: retrodrive Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance

On Monday, August 11, 2025, the Qubic protocol successfully completed its control attempt over the Monero network, making history.

After a month of high-risk technical confrontation, Qubic achieved a dominant position of 51% Monero hash power and successfully reorganized the blockchain. This event became a key milestone in the cryptocurrency industry and served as the ultimate validation of Qubic's "outsourced computing" and "Useful Proof of Work" (UPoW) model.

What is Qubic?

The goal of Qubic is very clear: to host a fully on-chain, decentralized AI model - AIGarth.

To achieve this goal, the Qubic chain is designed to be extremely lightweight, capable of running directly in the memory of validators. It acts as its own operating system, employs an innovative Quorum consensus mechanism, and is able to utilize mining power for tasks beyond simple hashing computations (useful proof of work).

Becoming the fastest and verifiable blockchain in the world (15 million transactions per second) was not the original goal, but rather a byproduct of this architecture. As part of a useful proof-of-work design, Qubic needs to implement the first phase of outsourced computing and test it in a real-world environment.

This Experiment

The Monero mining plan was originally launched as a proof of concept.

In the first phase, Qubic divided its resources into two parts: one part for mining Monero, and the other part for training its AI - AIGarth. This approach has proven to be very profitable, at one point yielding nearly 3 times the returns of directly mining Monero, while also attracting a large number of new hash power to join the network.

This experiment is a strategic and competitive operation. The Qubic community voted to restructure the reward mechanism, shifting from token buybacks to directly rewarding Computors (the validators of the Qubic chain). This change became a powerful economic incentive, attracting miners to migrate from other Monero mining pools, thereby driving this takeover action.

Process

The road to success on Monday is a two-step battle. The first attempt to achieve pure 51% hash power dominance encountered strong resistance, including a DDoS attack lasting more than a week, during which Qubic's infrastructure was put to the test. This "hacker war" highlighted the resilience of Qubic's decentralized network; despite interruptions in peripheral services, the core network continued to operate.

The final successful operation began on August 11, deploying a more complex "selfish mining" strategy. This technical means is effective when the total hash rate is slightly below or above 51%, with the method being that the Qubic mining pool secretly mines blocks and does not publish them temporarily. In the days leading up to the event, a sudden appearance of a large number of orphan blocks on the Monero network was a signal that the Qubic strategy was working. This method allowed the Qubic mining pool to obtain block rewards far exceeding their share and ultimately took control of the network's consensus.

However, as the internal discussion on whether it will impact the price of Monero is still ongoing, the team has decided not to take over the consensus of the protocol for the time being. An independent data scientist will verify the facts listed in this article. According to dkat, the chief developer of the Monero experiment:

dkat — 2025/8/12 19:43

In the block range [3475729, 3475850] (a total of 122 blocks), we mined 63 blocks, exceeding our set KPI (51% block share).

Congratulations @Miner-Notifications for receiving the full reward!

This data will be verified (possibly confirmed by Shai from kaspa - he dislikes us, so it will be a fair referee).

The Qubic team should have someone write a scientific report to publish this event on arxiv for historical archiving.

What to do next?

With the completion of the takeover test, the core functions of the Monero network remain normal—privacy, speed, and availability have not been affected. However, the ultimate goal is to have the security of the Monero protocol provided by Qubic miners, allowing rewards to be distributed through the Qubic mining pool, thereby bringing higher returns and creating a new incentive structure for Monero miners.

This historic event demonstrates the power of economic incentives and how a smaller protocol can cleverly suppress a larger protocol. The success of the Qubic experiment validated three key theories:

1. Feasibility of Outsourced Computing: Qubic's UPoW model has been proven in practice to be able to reallocate computing power for external tasks.
2. Incentives Determine Consensus: Any PoW blockchain may be controlled by miners attracted by higher economic incentives.
3. Infrastructure Resilience: The Qubic decentralized network demonstrates a strong survival capability when facing complex and sustained network attacks.

In this action that rewrites the competitive rules of blockchain, a $300 million AI protocol successfully suppressed a $6 billion privacy giant. The impact of this event will ripple through the entire crypto industry, providing a blueprint for future interactions between protocols, while also serving as a stark reminder of decentralized systems – economic incentives are the ultimate arbiters of power.

Timeline of Historical Events

• Epoch 172 Review — Monero Experiment (Hashrate Highest 50%)
• Epoch 171 Review — Engine Preheating (Maximum Computing Power 45%)
• Epoch 169 Review — Qubic Faces DDoS Attack (Hash Rate at 24% Max)