Monero appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack. The privacy-focused blockchain, launched in 2014 and long targeted by governments and 3-letters agencies, is already banned from most major centralized exchanges. The Qubic mining pool has been amassing hashrate for months and now controls a majority of the network. A major chain reorganization was detected this morning. With its current dominance, Qubic can rewrite the blockchain, enable double-spending, and censor any transaction. Sustaining this attack is estimated to cost $75 million per day. While potentially lucrative, it threatens to destroy confidence in the network almost overnight. Other miners are left with no incentive to continue, as Qubic can simply orphan any competing blocks, effectively becoming the sole miner. In effect, a $300 million market-cap chain is taking over a $6 billion one. Monero’s options for recovery are limited, and a full takeover is now possible and even likely. So far, XMR has dropped only 13%.
