The $75 Million Question: When a Network Attack Costs More Than It Earns

What happens when you spend tens of millions of dollars just to prove you can break a network, only to pocket a few hundred thousand in return? This is the absurd reality behind Qubic’s assault on Monero’s infrastructure—a case study in blockchain economics gone sideways.

The Monero Network Under Siege: A Calculated Power Grab

Between August 2nd and 31st, the Monero community witnessed an unprecedented challenge to its security model. An independent blockchain project called Qubic, led by former IOTA co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo, launched a coordinated computing power offensive against one of the most privacy-focused cryptocurrency networks in existence.

Unlike other blockchains vulnerable to commercial ASIC mining hardware, Monero deliberately limits itself to CPU and GPU mining—a design choice meant to decentralize participation and prevent mining consolidation. This architectural choice, ironically, opened a different attack vector: the vulnerability to large-scale commodity computing power mobilization.

Qubic’s operation exploited this gap. Starting in May 2025, the project initiated what it called a “Useful Proof of Work” (UPoW) model—a mechanism allowing miners to dedicate computing resources simultaneously to solving mathematical problems and training Qubic’s artificial intelligence system, Aigarth. The economic incentive was straightforward: mine Monero, receive both cryptocurrency rewards and $QUBIC tokens, creating a dual-reward ecosystem designed to attract massive computational resources.

How the Attack Unfolded: Signals and Suspicions

Community monitors detected the assault through subtle but telling signals. Reddit-based observers noticed chain reorganizations—instances where the blockchain appeared to revert and reprocess blocks, a signature move when an attacker briefly controls sufficient hash power. One monitor documented the suspicious timing: an orphan block appearing exactly 12 hours before Qubic publicly announced its challenge, suggesting reconnaissance operations.

More alarming was the attack rate itself. Qubic deliberately disabled public hash rate reporting to major mining pools in early August—a move that obscured its true computing capacity from outside observers. When its own dashboard did report figures, inconsistencies emerged. While the network showed 5.35 GH/s aggregate hash power, Qubic claimed 2.45 GH/s, yet independent calculations suggested the actual figure represented only approximately 30% of total network capacity, not the claimed 52.72%.

The timing pattern betrayed sophistication: Qubic’s hash power operated in a deliberate on-off cycle rather than maintaining constant pressure. This intermittent attack strategy proved more threatening than stable mining would have been, as the Monero core team acknowledged, because it maximized disruption potential while maintaining operational flexibility.

The Evidence Gap: Did Qubic Actually Achieve 51%?

The cryptocurrency world remains divided on whether Qubic genuinely controlled the network. Skeptics point to contradictory data: Qubic’s internal metrics don’t align with independent block analysis. Throughout the entire challenge period, the community documented only one suspected chain reorganization affecting six consecutive blocks—hardly the signature of dominant hash rate control.

If Qubic briefly exceeded 51% of the hash rate, the duration appeared minimal. Such brief surges, lasting only minutes or affecting a handful of blocks, lack the sustained dominance necessary to execute meaningful double-spend attacks or transaction censorship. The Monero community’s real-time monitoring revealed no sustained surge in orphaned blocks or systematic chain manipulation.

The consensus hardened: Qubic may have briefly touched 51%, but whether intentionally or through measurement ambiguity remains contested. What’s undeniable is the absence of prolonged, controlled attack manifestations that would constitute genuine network domination.

The Economics of Absurdity: $75 Million Spent for $100,000 in Rewards

Here’s where the fundamental absurdity of the operation becomes inescapable.

Security analysts from companies like SlowMist estimated the daily operational cost of maintaining 50%+ hash rate dominance on Monero at approximately $75 million per day. This encompasses hardware acquisition, facility infrastructure, electricity consumption, and operational overhead.

Now consider the revenue: Under Monero’s current emission schedule, approximately 432 XMR gets mined daily across the entire network. If one entity controlled 51% of hash power (and thus produced 51% of blocks), they’d extract roughly 220 XMR daily. At Monero’s recent price of approximately $246 per coin, this translates to approximately $54,000 daily, or roughly $106,000 at optimal conditions.

The arithmetic doesn’t merely fail to justify the expenditure—it highlights a staggering economic disconnect. You’d need to operate for 707+ consecutive days just to break even on daily costs alone, ignoring capital depreciation on hardware.

According to Qubic’s own “Epoch 172 Report,” the operation allocated its Monero extraction into a 50-50 split: half directed toward buyback-and-burn operations on $QUBIC tokens, with the remainder distributed to miners in token form. This means a project with market capitalization under $300 million was leveraging mining of a $4.6 billion asset to artificially support its token economics.

The Real Business Model: Token Manipulation, Not Mining Profits

This revelation reframes the entire operation. Qubic’s motivation wasn’t extracting mining revenue—the mathematics make that impossible. Instead, the attack functioned as an elaborate token-support mechanism disguised as a “security demonstration.”

Qubic’s actual business model operates through artificial incentive architecture: miners receive $QUBIC tokens rather than fiat compensation, creating speculative demand pressure. As long as the token maintains or appreciates in value, miners perceive attractive nominal returns despite the underlying inefficiency. The mining operation itself becomes secondary—a means of generating credibility and market narrative for token speculation.

This model depends entirely on sustained confidence. Should miners question the token’s sustainability, or observe price instability, a cascading collapse would trigger: mass token liquidation, price crashes, and a rush for exits that would rapidly deplete the project’s operating capacity.

The Monero Community Fights Back: From Code to Market Warfare

The assault didn’t proceed unchallenged. The Monero community responded across multiple fronts.

Most dramatically, Qubic’s infrastructure itself suffered a severe DDoS attack during the challenge period, with reported computing power dropping from 2.6 GH/s to 0.8 GH/s—a staggering 70% reduction. Ivancheglo accused Sergei Chernykh (pseudonym: sech1), lead developer of the XMRig mining software, of orchestrating the attack.

Chernykh flatly denied involvement, noting that “I’m not the only one in the Monero community unhappy with Qubic’s actions. But I would never resort to illegal tactics like DDoS attacks. Others might.” The response implicitly acknowledged community sentiment while maintaining personal boundaries regarding method and legality.

Within the Monero subreddit, discussions escalated toward organized counteroffensives. Community members proposed coordinated financial attacks: “We need a #ShortQubic movement. They provoked us. We can only fight back,” one post declared. Others suggested leveraged shorting operations to collapse $QUBIC’s market price and thereby strangle miner incentives.

Deeper analysis revealed potential ideological dimensions. Qubic’s public team roster featured mostly pseudonyms, with only two named individuals: Ivancheglo and researcher David Vivancos, a proponent of “technocratic” governance models—decision-making structures driven by technical experts and quantified data rather than democratic participation. This philosophy directly contradicts Monero’s foundational commitment to decentralization, privacy preservation, and community autonomy.

An Unfinished Confrontation

The Monero-Qubic clash represents more than a technical security incident; it crystallizes tensions between competing blockchain philosophies and economic models. Qubic’s operation—fundamentally dependent on maintaining speculative momentum for a project token—pit artificial incentive structures against genuine decentralization principles.

The attack rate data, the economic calculations, the technical evidence, and the community response all suggest an outcome still unfolding. Whether Monero’s decentralized defenders can neutralize Qubic’s token-fueled mining assault through technological hardening, coordinated financial pressure, or public sentiment remains an open question.

What’s certain: the $75 million question—why spend that much to earn $100,000?—exposes the underlying fragility of models built on perpetual speculation rather than fundamental economic value. The answer will shape how blockchain communities understand and defend against similar attacks in the future.