Monero (XMR) builders and pool operators are weighing a swift, software-level response to final week’s hashrate shock after the Qubic mining pool claimed it had briefly dominated the community and triggered a six-block reorganization. Former Monero lead maintainer Riccardo Spagni proposed deploying “detective mining,” a pool-side technique he says can neutralize selfish-mining assaults with no arduous fork. “A proposal to make Monero utterly resilient to selfish-mining assaults, no protocol modifications wanted,” Spagni wrote, linking to a brand new Monero Research Lab challenge that outlines the strategy.
Qubic’s marketing campaign culminated on Aug. 12 with public statements that it had surpassed 51% of Monero’s hashrate and “efficiently reorganiz[ed] the blockchain,” a part of what the venture billed as a reside “51% takeover demo.” Qubic itself characterised its technique as “egocentric mining,” a tactic that may win outsized rewards with as little as “33–40%” of hashrate, not essentially a full majority.
Risk controls kicked in throughout the trade. Kraken posted a standing discover in mid-August that it had paused XMR deposits “after detecting {that a} single mining pool has gained greater than 50% of the community’s whole hashing energy,” preserving buying and selling and withdrawals open whereas it monitored community integrity. The pause underscored how even short-lived reorganizations—Monero targets two-minute blocks, making six blocks roughly twelve minutes—can pressure exchanges to reassess affirmation insurance policies.
Not everybody accepted Qubic’s framing. Analysts on the RIAT Institute argued “no 51% assault has occurred,” citing knowledge suggesting Qubic’s peak contributed far lower than a real majority and noting {that a} six-block reorg is inadequate proof of sustained management able to reversing totally confirmed transactions.
Detective Mining Could Shield Monero
Spagni’s “detective mining” proposal seeks to break down the benefit of any pool trying egocentric mining by exploiting info already uncovered in pool job messages. In pooled mining, Stratum job payloads embody the earlier block hash (“prevhash”). A detective miner (or a pool operating a “sensor” proxy) subscribes to competing swimming pools’ job streams; when a leaked prevhash doesn’t match the general public tip, the pool instantly builds and broadcasts a sound little one on high of the attacker’s hidden dad or mum, forcing the egocentric miner to disclose or lose its personal lead. Because this operates totally on the pool/Stratum-proxy layer, it requires “no consensus or protocol modifications,” making it deployable on at the moment’s Monero stack.
The economics are the purpose. Spagni’s abstract of the underlying Lee–Kim mannequin (2019) claims that if roughly half of community hashrate (i.e., the biggest swimming pools) undertake detective mining, the egocentric miner’s break-even threshold jumps into the ~32–42% vary relying on tie-breaking assumptions—eroding the assault’s profitability and, with wider adoption, wiping it out throughout examined splits. That is a materially increased hurdle than the classical Eyal–Sirer outcome, underneath which egocentric mining might be worthwhile round one-quarter to one-third of hashrate.
Spagni’s challenge additionally anticipates adversarial counter-moves. It recommends quorum-based detection from a number of sensors, brief “grace home windows” earlier than diverting hashrate, and share-submission checks to defeat decoy jobs—all with price limits and telemetry to tune false-positive danger. These are pragmatic pool-operator playbooks quite than protocol-level guidelines, aligning with Monero’s desire to harden incentives and operations earlier than touching consensus.
For Monero, the following steps will probably be social as a lot as technical: main swimming pools would want to ship and allow detective-mining logic for the protection to chew on the modeled thresholds. As of Aug. 19, the thought is a public proposal underneath energetic dialogue quite than an adopted commonplace. But after per week by which a single pool’s marketing campaign produced a measurable reorg and exchange-level mitigations, the trail of least friction—pool software program updates that increase the price of egocentric mining—has rapidly grow to be the middle of gravity for the venture’s short-term response.
At press time, XMR traded at $268.
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