Qubic Performs 51% Monero Network Takeover Demonstration

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

After a month-long, high-stakes technical confrontation, Qubic reached 51% of Monero's hashrate dominance, successfully reorganizing the blockchain. This event marks a pivotal moment in the crypto industry, serving as the ultimate validation of Qubic's "Outsourced Computations" and "Useful Proof of Work" (UPoW) models.

What is Qubic?

Qubic is built for a purpose: to host a fully on-chain, decentralized AI model, AIGarth. To achieve that, the chain was designed to be extremely lightweight, running out of the RAM of its validators. It functions as its own operating system, features innovative Quorum consensus, and has the ability to utilize mining power for other purposes rather than wasting it on simple hashing (Useful Proof of Work). Becoming the fastest, certified blockchain in the world at 15 million transactions per second was not the primary goal but a byproduct of the architecture.

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

The Experiment

The Monero mining initiative began as a proof of concept. In its initial phase, Qubic split its resources between mining Monero and training its AI, AIGarth. This approach has proved highly profitable. At one point it became nearly 3x more lucrative than direct Monero mining and also attracted a torrent of new compute power to the network.

The experiment was a strategic, and at times combative, application of game theory. The Qubic community, through a decisive vote, chose to restructure its reward mechanism, shifting from token buybacks to direct rewards for Computors (Qubic’s chain validators). This change served as a powerful economic incentive that drew miners away from other Monero pools, fueling the takeover push.

The Process

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

The final, successful push began on August 11th with the deployment of a more sophisticated Selfish Mining strategy. This technical tactic, which proved effective with slightly less and at times more than 51% of the total hashrate, involved the Qubic pool secretly mining blocks and withholding them. The sudden appearance of orphaned blocks on the Monero network in the days leading up to today was the tell-tale 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 has decided not to take over the protocol's consensus for the moment because of internal discussions on whether that would hurt Monero's price. A third-party data scientist will confirm the facts listed in this article. Per dkat, the lead developer of the Monero experiment:

dkat — 8/12/2025 7:43 PM
in the period [3475729, 3475850] (window of 122 blocks) we have mined 63 blocks. Thus, it surpassed the KPI we put for ourself (51% blocks).
Congrats @Miner-Notifications for the full reward!
This info will be verified (probably by Shai from kaspa - who hate us a lot to be a fair referee)
Someone in qubic team should write a scientific report about this event and put on arxiv for future ref

What Now?

With the takeover test now complete, the Monero network's core functionality remains intact. Its privacy, speed, and usability have not been compromised. However, the end goal is for the Monero protocol's security to be provided by Qubic’s miners. This way, the rewards would be funneled through Qubic’s pools, bringing higher profitability and creating a new, higher incentive landscape for Monero miners.

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

• Outsourced Computations are Viable: Qubic’s UPoW model is a proven, real-world technology capable of repurposing compute power for 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: Qubic's decentralized network demonstrated a remarkable ability to withstand and recover from sophisticated, sustained network attacks.

In a move that has rewritten the rules of blockchain competition, a $300 million market cap AI protocol has successfully asserted its dominance over a $6 billion market cap privacy giant. The implications of this event will resonate throughout the crypto industry, providing a blueprint for future interactions between protocols and a stark reminder that in decentralized systems, economic incentives are the ultimate arbiter of power.

Historic Timeline of Events

Epoch 172 Recap - The Monero Experiment (Hashrate max. 50%)
Epoch 171 Recap - Warming Up the Engines (Hashrate max. 45%)
Epoch 169 Recap – Qubic Under DDoS Attack (Hashrate max. 24%)