Mining Malfunction Wipes Out 36-minute Segment from Monero's Blockchain due to 18 Block Adjustment
In a surprising turn of events, the Monero blockchain experienced a record 18-block reorganization in the last 24 hours. This incident follows a controversial AI-oriented project, Qubic, which claimed to have marshaled a majority of Monero's hashrate last month.
The reorganization, triggered by Qubic, affected block heights 3,499,659 through 3,499,676. As a result, about 118 already-confirmed transactions were invalidated. The brief rewrite of roughly 36 minutes of Monero's ledger history has re-opened a contentious debate inside the Monero community about defenses against reorganizations.
Qubic, an AI-focused layer-1 blockchain, recently acquired more than half of Monero's mining power and uses a "useful proof-of-work" model to repurpose XMR mining rewards for its own token economy. This campaign coincided with a six-block reorg in August and led to temporary deposit suspensions at some exchanges.
Despite the incident, Qubic founder Sergey Ivancheglo stated that Monero will stay despite the incident. Merchants and services were advised to raise confirmation thresholds until conditions normalize.
The community has not yet coalesced around a specific fix, but the urgency has unmistakably increased. Proposals for defending against reorganizations include rolling 10-block checkpoints, adopting elements akin to Dash's ChainLocks, "detective mining" incentives, and merge-mining concepts. Each proposed defense has trade-offs, such as introducing degrees of centralization or new trust assumptions, or uneven adoption.
Security researchers warned that the August event did not prove sustained 51% dominance, but persistent hashrate concentration raises the ceiling on how deep such reorgs can go. SlowMist founder Yu Xian commented that if the Monero community does not take the issue of block reorganization seriously, the risk will always remain. Independent monitor OrangeFren warned about the reorganization on crypto social channels.
Interestingly, markets treated the event with surprising resilience, with XMR rallying between roughly 5% and 7% within hours, trading above $300 on some venues.
Monday's 18-block episode materially raises that ceiling. A miner or pool with outsized hashpower can extend a side chain and force nodes to reorganize, as appears to have happened in the recent Monero reorganization. The community will need to find a solution quickly to ensure the security and stability of the Monero blockchain.
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