- Monero’s blockchain experienced a rare 18-block reorganisation on Sunday, reversing 117 transactions and raising concerns about the network’s resilience to double-spending attacks.
- While not officially confirmed, many in the community believe the reorg was caused by Qubic, an AI-focused blockchain and mining pool that has previously stated its intention to “test” the Monero network.
- Despite the significant network disruption, the XMR token price showed remarkable resilience, trading flat during the event before rallying 7.4% in the hours that followed.
Monero, the privacy-focused blockchain, suffered an 18-block reorganisation on Sunday that reversed 117 transactions. But the XMR token remains resilient, and it actually climbed more than 7% in the hours following the incident.
While not 100% confirmed, most believe the attack was carried out by Qubic, an AI-oriented layer-1 blockchain and mining pool that had already announced publicly its intentions of exploiting the privacy protocol. Qubic was also behind a smaller six-block reorg on the network not so long ago, as Crypto News Australia reported.
The latest reorg began at block 3499659 at 5:12 am UTC and ended at block 3499676 around 43 minutes later, according to node operators who shared logs on X. Cryptocurrency researcher Rucknium confirmed the breach on GitHub.
Because the fork exceeded nine blocks, Monero’s standard 10-block confirmation window did not protect all affected transactions. Monero Research Lab urged users to wait longer than the default 10 confirmations before considering payments final and suggested developers evaluate temporary Domain Name System (DNS) checkpoints to bolster defenses.
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XMR Not Budging
Reorganisations occur when two competing chains emerge in PoW networks, with the longer and higher-difficulty chain eventually prevailing. While short reorgs are common, an 18-block event is rare and raises risks of double spending.
Security firm SlowMist’s co-founder Yu Xian warned that ignoring these risks leaves Monero vulnerable, even without a clear majority of hash power.
Despite the disruption, Monero’s token traded flat during the event before rallying 7.4% from US$287.54 (AU$442.10) to US$306.55 (AU$475) about eight hours later, outperforming a broader crypto market decline of roughly 1%. In the monthly chart, there’s a healthy-looking 20.5% increase:
Popular crypto podcaster known as xenu, who first flagged the event, called it the largest reorg in Monero’s history and suggested Qubic “may have intervened” to stabilise XMR’s market price.
As we know, Qubic is becoming quite a controversial protocol in the crypto space, as they’re basically randomly attacking proof-of-work (PoW) networks to test their resilience, so it’s natural to point fingers at them.
Xenu claimed Qubic may have engaged in “selfish mining” by withholding blocks to privately extend a chain before releasing it to overtake the main network. “This is the largest reorg in Monero’s history,” Xenu posted on X.
But Qubic founder, Sergey Ivancheglo, dismissed those allegations, aggressively telling Xenu that he “pulled all that out of his ass” in response to the accusations.
I guess you can never have a boring day in this industry.
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