Monero Attack: Kraken Pauses XMR Deposits Amid Qubic’s 51% Attack Threat – Next Target DOGE

Key Takeaways

• Monero Attack: After Qubic announced 51% hashrate dominance, Kraken halted Monero (XMR) deposits due to concerns about a potential double-spend attack.
• Independent audits show Qubic never truly held 51%, peaking at around 38%, but used “selfish mining” to create the illusion of control.
• Even with all the chaos, Monero’s price went up by 6%. This suggests traders and community saw it as a brief scare and not as a major problem.
• Qubic’s community now votes to target Dogecoin next, meaning a broader threat to PoW blockchains.

The Attack That Wasn’t (Quite)

With Kraken freezing Monero deposits recently, the crypto space was prepared for the worst: a 51% attack on one of the most robust privacy chains in existence. Meanwhile, Qubic, a layer-1 artificial intelligence (AI)-based blockchain project, claimed to have taken the majority of the hashrate and even reorganized six blocks. This last is a traditional red flag of chain manipulation. But dig deeper, the story twists.

The latest: Blockchain researchers found that Qubic’s hashrate had never exceeded 40%. Instead, they ended up using a technique known as “selfish mining”, where miners keep blocks, thereby creating an artificial dominance, as a strategy to intimidate other miners. 

Moreover, by claiming victory and pretending to orphan honest miners’ blocks, they created a state of psychological panic, hoping defectors would join them rather than lose hope altogether. For instance, this was not an actual takeover, but rather a game theory play.

XRM Price Defying Logic

Oddly enough, Monero (XMR) surged 8% in the last 24 hours and around 15% during the weekend only. Traders seemed to read Kraken’s cautious response to this episode as a vote of confidence, as opposed to signalling weakness. Others speculated the fear of attacks was exaggerated based on the speed with which Monero’s community debunked one Qubic claim after another.

Regardless, vulnerabilities were exposed. Monero’s RandomX algorithm, which is intended to resist Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners, actually makes re-direction easier for mining pools using generic hardware. The reports by Qubic that they added hashrate rather than just “poaching” miners prove that, at some point, even decentralized networks can be coerced.

Dogecoin in the Crosshairs

Qubic’s next target? Dogecoin (DOGE). Qbic’s community voted overwhelmingly to now test DOGE’s defenses, presumably due to its Scrypt-based mining, where a few large pools dominate the chain. If Qubic succeeds on this, it could spread security concerns for memecoins and small Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks that depend mainly on miners’ goodwill.

The Monero Attack: A Wake-Up Call for Proof-of-Work (PoW)

So far, the Monero attack was a matter of survival this round, but the lesson is painful: miner coordination is just as important as hashrate. Qubic was playing with the psychological fear, not brute force, a tactic that could exploit and destabilize other chains. 

Final Thought: While Kraken prepares to once again allow deposits, the crypto space must question: Can PoW networks innovate faster than attackers can exploit human nature, maybe?

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For more Monero-related analysis, read: Monero Price Analysis: XMR Bounces Off Golden Fibonacci Ratio; Eyes on $275 and Key Drivers Ahead!