[HN Gopher] Monero appears to be in the midst of a successful 51...
___________________________________________________________________
Monero appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack
Author : treyd
Score : 433 points
Date : 2025-08-12 11:56 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| Alifatisk wrote:
| "of a 51% attack", it's called a sybil attack
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
|
| Btw, here's the alternative link
| https://xcancel.com/p3b7_/status/1955173413992984988
| vlabakje90 wrote:
| Going by the definition given in the wiki you've linked, a
| Sybil attack is about creating many fake identities to gain
| disproportionate influence in a network. A 51% attack in
| blockchain terms is specifically about controlling the majority
| of the network's mining/staking power to override consensus.
|
| So I'd say they're not exactly the same.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Someone amassing 51% of the network would probably want to do
| so under some fake identities so others don't realize what's
| about to happen. Not the same, but probably related.
| delfinom wrote:
| Lol, there's no such thing as "fake identities" here. You
| just run more miners with different payout addresses for
| mining. But there is no "fake"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > You just run more miners with different payout
| addresses for mining.
|
| That it's dramatically easier to conceal your identity
| doesn't mean concealing your identity isn't useful.
| treyd wrote:
| It's the same failure mode as a Sybil attack, but it's called a
| 51% when there's the additional assumption of the hashrate
| being hard to obtain and evenly-enough distributed to mitigate
| sybiling, and that assumption is being violated.
| the8472 wrote:
| Byzantine Failure seems more appropriate.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Replies seem to be arguing that this wasn't a 51% attack and was
| something else. I don't know crypto well enough to verify their
| claims, though.
| dboreham wrote:
| Post seems confused. A 51% attack doesn't allow the attacker to
| sign transactions with someone else's key.
| codeflo wrote:
| You: "Post seems confused. A 51% attack doesn't allow the
| attacker to sign transactions with someone else's key."
|
| Maybe you misread, the post says this: "With its current
| dominance, Qubic can rewrite the blockchain, enable double-
| spending, and censor any transaction."
|
| All of which are possible if someone has that level of control,
| and none of which involve signing with other people's keys.
|
| (As some people seem confused about the impact of 51% attacks:
| Of course you can't double-spend in a single blockchain, as
| that is prevented. But the nature of these attacks is that
| there's no longer one true blockchain. You can create one fork
| of the blockchain where you send the money to someone, receive
| goods in return, and then afterwards switch to a longer fork of
| the blockchain where the money was never sent.)
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Doing this requires massive tangible infrastructure subject
| to seizure to pay your new bad debts as you become subject to
| arrest in a lot of the places one may want to spend time in.
|
| This doesn't seem like as much of an actual risk. A better
| way to make money would be to create a perception that the
| value of the coin is at risk before buying it cheap.
|
| Actually devaluing it doesn't seem worthwhile financially.
| codeflo wrote:
| > become subject to arrest in a lot of the places
|
| I have an idea for a much cheaper way to store and transfer
| money that also relies on the existence of a police.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Totally agree I just specifically doubt the virtue of
| stealing with extra steps which involves such obviously
| tangible assets.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't pass the sniff test.
| If a 51% attack was successful, every other miner could easily
| spot this and would stop mining. The fact that this has not
| happened is more trustworthy than a random guy on Twitter.
| immibis wrote:
| Why would every other miner stop mining, making it a 100%
| attack?
|
| Yesterday I was running a Monero node and looking at it, and
| got an unusually very high number of chain reorganization
| messages. I could believe a 51% attack happened.
| corimaith wrote:
| A network might collectively just fork the chain and
| blacklist the attacker in that fork.
| jadamson wrote:
| That isn't possible - miners don't have an "identity" to
| blacklist.
| im3w1l wrote:
| You could do it with a whitelist. If there is a fork,
| give disproportionate weight to blocks mined by a
| whitelisted participant when doing the longest-chain
| calculation. Ideally you should include the proof of
| being on the whitelist in the block itself, but if that's
| not possible for some reason you could always send the
| information off-chain.
| jadamson wrote:
| That's centralization, which is the opposite of what's
| intended and has its own risks. Most blocks are mined by
| pools, so you'll have to whitelist them, and while you
| might trust the pool operators now, will you forever?
| You'll be making the cost of an attack significantly
| cheaper for them (or someone who steals their magic key,
| or tricks you into adding them to the blessed list).
| im3w1l wrote:
| I agree that it is not ideal. But addressing some of the
| specific point brought up:
|
| 1. a) The list doesn't need to be hardcoded, it could be
| a configuration. b) So trust doesn't need to be
| permanent. c) It could be decentralized in the sense of
| allowing different people to have configs 2. Miners not
| on the list can still participate just with lower weight
| in the case of a fork. And they still get full reward.
| jadamson wrote:
| 1. A cryptocurrency requires consensus, so no, you can't
| have different configs for determining the validity of a
| chain. Making it a config variable only makes it faster
| to close the barn door after the horse has bolted. 2. Has
| no bearing on any point I made.
|
| What will likely happen is a PoS BFT layer on top of PoW,
| although there are other options being considered:
|
| https://github.com/monero-project/research-lab/issues/136
| im3w1l wrote:
| As long as people eventually reach the same conclusion
| about which chain is the legit one it's fine that they
| use different reasoning to arrive at that conclusion.
|
| If they fail to ever converge there is probably such a
| large disagreement in the community that a fork is for
| the best anyway.
| jadamson wrote:
| > As long as people eventually reach the same conclusion
| about which chain is the legit one it's fine
|
| What? No, it very much it isn't. Consensus needs to be
| ongoing, within a handful of blocks (Monero locks
| transfers for 10 blocks for this reason, called
| "confirmations").
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-
| spending#Decentralized_...
|
| https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/accepting/
| im3w1l wrote:
| Firstly, I think you underestimate how quickly good faith
| actors with slightly different configs would come to
| agree. A handful of blocks should be enough. Secondly, if
| reorgs start becoming a problem, exchanges and merchants
| could monitor for a situation with two competing chain
| and temporarily suspend processing. There is still the
| possibility that some one will suddenly reveal a long
| chain they had kept secret, but anyone doing such a thing
| is very suspicious.
| treyd wrote:
| If you're doing a whitelist of trusted parties you might
| as well do classical BFT without the mining.
| treyd wrote:
| Unless the attacker was actively choosing to exploit the 51%
| hashrate power they have then it would still make economic
| sense for remaining minority miners to keep mining.
| fnands wrote:
| I am way OOTL with crypto drama.
|
| Anyone have any context about who Qubic are, and what their deal
| is?
| fruitworks wrote:
| It's a long story, I wrote a blog about it here:
| https://rdrama.net/h/slackernews/post/385556/chud-chudsmug-u...
| spoaceman7777 wrote:
| This is a bot hoax. The only news here is that twitter still
| hasn't fixed its insane spam account problem
| rmm wrote:
| Qubix(group performing attack) founder x post
|
| https://x.com/c___f___b/status/1955158154213220492
| polotics wrote:
| This man is a true poet, just beautiful look at this quote
| found on his exTwitter:
|
| (quote starts here)
|
| """Writing this date here to memorize when the concept of
| Decentralized Artificial Intelligence (#DAI) got its final
| shape.
|
| Not bullshit like "It runs on a #blockchain so it must be
| decentralized". In this concept each entity holds a secret
| know-how which modifies #IntelligentTissue (in cooperation with
| other know-hows owned by other entities, if needs to solve a
| complex task). Secrecy of each know-how ensures nobody can copy
| it, others can only attempt to create something similar by
| spending computational resources.
|
| Each #AI is an original object, #IntelligentTissue is its
| hologram. #Qubic is the platform for AI creation, their
| convergence and intelligent tissue hosting"""
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Psychosis or marketing scheme? Who can even tell the
| difference anymore...
| typpilol wrote:
| He's a bit insane. I did the same thing to the iota Network
| and brought it down to 0% confirmation for a month
|
| Trust me he did not like it
| Tiberium wrote:
| Seems to not be the case, a real 51% attack would need 10 blocks
| at the very least, because that's when Monero transactions get
| confirmed.
|
| See e.g. https://x.com/kayabaNerve/status/1955173552363016434
|
| https://x.com/kayabaNerve/status/1955228805598966258
| moomin wrote:
| To summarise:
|
| * One actor in the space appears to have done a proof of concept
| takeover of 51%.
|
| * It's not clear there was any malicious action nor intent in
| doing so.
|
| * Performing something like this is definitely expensive.
|
| * The potential impact of doing so is disputed.
|
| * Whether or not it was achieved is also disputed
|
| However, what has been known you some time is that the largest
| BitCoin miners have more power than the entire community of many
| alt-coins. Whether this is an issue is a matter for debate.
| Certainly, until now, no-one has chosen to flex like this.
| lagniappe wrote:
| >until now, no-one has chosen to flex like this.
|
| The two networks have wildly different proof-of-work
| algorithms, they're incompatible. A BTC ASIC will never mine
| Monero, ever.
| rokkamokka wrote:
| That's not true for all altcoins however
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Its always hilarious when someone launches an L1 with an
| algorithm everyone can already dominate and it gets
| attacked immediately
|
| Last time I saw that was on photonics processor blockchains
| scyclow wrote:
| Pretty much everything other than bitcoin, monero, and
| dogecoin are running proof of stake these days anyhow, so
| it kind of doesn't matter.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Litecoin goes in that PoW group too.
|
| In fact, Litecoin has an optional privacy feature called
| MWEB, which is probably why Litecoin too got kicked off
| of being named on some conventional news sites.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| That's not at all relevant to parent post's point. BTC mining
| is famously centralized, and continues to get more so. It is
| inevitable that a manufacturer of BTC asics with access to
| cheap power will become large enough to control 51% of the
| hash. It's inevitable. It's bad system design - it makes
| being able to manufacture your own custom silicon table
| stakes to run a financial system for some reason.
|
| BTC will have to move to a proof of stake design to survive.
| It's unavoidable.
| ifwinterco wrote:
| That is debatable, but also besides anything else, changing
| to PoS means changing the tokenomics (some tail emission
| for staking rewards, no 21m hard cap), which means it's
| incredibly unlikely to happen
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| why would staking rewards be any more necessary than
| mining rewards?
| robocat wrote:
| > It is inevitable that a manufacturer of BTC asics with
| access to cheap power will become large enough to control
| 51% of the hash
|
| The ASIC manufacturer would also need a backdoor. ASIC
| manufacturers don't control mining.
|
| Large miners are unlikely to allow backdoors into their
| mining network.
| fruitworks wrote:
| ASIC miners often do control mining. They often mine with
| chips before they drop them in the public market
| LikesPwsh wrote:
| BTC can't move to proof of stake because religious zealots
| would keep their money in the old fork.
|
| It's doomed in general, see the cash fork.
| latchkey wrote:
| Tokenized bitcoin.
| soganess wrote:
| I ask this not as a gotcha (I don't know the first thing
| about this), but rather because I'm interested: How do you
| know not "ever"?
|
| Like, trivially, it's an ASIC, so I can use it to simulate a
| von Neumann[*] machine, hence I can use it to run whatever
| algorithm I want. Would that be more efficient than using a
| modern OoO superscalar? Almost surely not, but that doesn't
| mean it can't be done, just that it shouldn't be done that
| way.
|
| *: I realize that the ASICs used in Bitcoin miners don't have
| dram access, but that isn't a general limitation of ASICs,
| just those ASIC 'chips' (and maybe not even those chips, just
| their implementations in bitcoin miners)
|
| EDIT: Thanks to everyone who answered! For some reason, I had
| it in my head that the way we implement fixed function stuff
| in an ASIC was basically the same as a "burn once" FPGA.
| Brains gonna brain.
| BoppreH wrote:
| You might be confusing ASICs with FPGAs. You can't
| reprogram an ASIC, the algorithm is fixed at design time,
| and the chip built for this single purpose.
| tux3 wrote:
| >Like, trivially, it's an ASIC, so I can use it to simulate
| a von Neumann[*] machine
|
| No, that doesn't follow at all. An ASIC doesn't mean a
| general purpose CPU or FPGA. A chip that only knows how to
| do, say, video decoding is an example of ASIC. The video
| chip can't do bitcoin, the bitcoin chip can't do monero.
| They're not general purpose.
| blibble wrote:
| > Like, trivially, it's an ASIC, so I can use it to
| simulate a von Neumann[*] machine
|
| asic does not mean turing complete
|
| good luck simulating a von neumann machine on a sha256
| accelerator
| soared wrote:
| Way more context here https://www.cointribune.com/en/qubic-
| hits-52-72-of-moneros-t...
| apercu wrote:
| In all seriousness, can you explain why the "impact of doing so
| is disputed". In my laypersons understanding, if you control
| ~51% of the hashrate you can outpace everyone else in producing
| blocks, which means you can change (reorganize) your blockchain
| history which means the ledger isn't trustworthy. Right?
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| Yes.
| corimaith wrote:
| That's the point, you can only change YOUR history. From the
| perspective of future merchant, that's the trivial to deal
| with. And for existing transactions, you'd need the value of
| the goods from the transactions to exceed the cost of
| controlling to network to be worth it. But what kind of goods
| that can be transferred so quickly be worth that much?
| xnorswap wrote:
| Maybe there's more resilience to prevent chain swaps now,
| but my understanding of the original blockchain algorithm
| is that:
|
| At block N someone could start to privately mine (empty)
| blocks.
|
| They keep mining in private until block N+x is public, at
| which time the private (51%) chain is length N+x+1.
|
| They then announce their longer chain.
|
| By the protocol, this longer chain (technically "most work"
| chain) is the more trusted one, and undoes any transactions
| in N+1 through N+x.
| SamPatt wrote:
| More or less, but the private chain doesn't need to
| contain empty blocks.
|
| A more sophisticated attack would include all the
| legitimate transactions on the network except for their
| own transaction(s) which they're trying to double spend.
| That way the network isn't disrupted apart from the
| parties you're double spending against.
| LikesPwsh wrote:
| That way you can also claim 100% of mining rewards with
| 51% hash rate.
| _3u10 wrote:
| How? If that were true you'd also be able to get 50% of
| block chain rewards with 25.1% of the hashing power. But
| you can't because it isn't true.
| dbdr wrote:
| You only mine blocks on top of your previous blocks,
| ignoring blocks produced by the 49%. Since you have 51%,
| your chain is the longest over time, so you have 100% of
| the mining rewards.
|
| You can't do that with 25% (or even 40%) hashrate.
| PhilippGille wrote:
| It's worth being precise here:
|
| - The attacker can doublespend their transactions if their
| hashing power is high enough to create more blocks than what
| the recipient is waiting for. E.g. you buy a lambo, the shop
| waits 10 blocks after the tx is in a block and gives you the
| lambo, then you create a longer chain with 11 blocks to
| replace the other one, and don't include the original lambo
| tx. 51% of hashing power is enough to create new blocks, but
| not enough to create 11 alternative blocks. That requires
| more hashing power.
|
| - The attacker can prevent other transactions from landing in
| a block, as long as they have majority
|
| - But the attacker can't create fake transactions (e.g. if
| they only have 1k Monero, they can't create a tx with 2k
| Monero). Because all nodes (not only miners) still verify the
| transactions
|
| - And the attacker can also not steal your money, because
| they don't have your private keys
| apercu wrote:
| In my head I kind of simplified it - if I can reorder the
| blocks in my history I can "reverse" a transaction, like
| "erase" that I bought a lambo yesterday so today I have not
| only the lambo, but the money that was in my account before
| I bought the lambo, too. But maybe me trying to over
| simplify and missing the forest for the trees (this is very
| much not my domain).
| nomilk wrote:
| Newb question, but why's it expensive, aren't they mining the
| whole time and can therefore make the usual money from that
| mining?
| treyd wrote:
| You are correct. It's expensive if you want to go rewrite
| history. 51% is when that becomes economically viable to do
| on its own.
| mattwilsonn888 wrote:
| "Performing something like this is definitely expensive"
|
| That is false. A 51% attack is only expensive to the degree to
| which the hashpower required to exceed 50% is obtained at
| negative margins.
|
| If an attacker can collect the total 51% or more hashpower at
| what would be a profitable rate despite the attack, then the
| attack is not "definitely expensive" - no, the attack is
| definitely profitable and the expense falls sorely on the
| minority.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Just because something is profitable doesn't mean it's not
| expensive, which only means it costs a lot of money.
|
| Or, you need to spend a lot of resources to do the attack
| even if it's the case that you get that money back when you
| succeed. And the attack is not available to you if you can't
| front those resources (because it's expensive rather than
| cheap).
| blantonl wrote:
| _Or, you need to spend a lot of resources to do the attack
| even if it 's the case that you get that money back when
| you succeed._
|
| There is a word for this. We call it risk.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd call this risk. Risk would be "you can
| invest the money, but you might not get it back" however
| the above is referring to the "a 51% attack absolutely
| works but you need a shit ton of money to do it" aspect
| instead. This makes it capital intensive, not
| (necessarily) risky.
| freehorse wrote:
| The fact that it succeeds does not mean that you get the
| money back (eg the price of monero could drop if that
| happens). You may also have miscalculated some parameters
| in all this or something unexpected happens (where human
| factor is involved). So there should always be risk
| involved imo. Otherwise I agree, even in a probability 1
| success situation this would still not be called "cheap".
| zamadatix wrote:
| Agreed, no such thing as a real-world investment with
| truly 0 risk.
| loxs wrote:
| Having the power to deny others to mine blocks does not
| mean that you can obtain the tokens from their wallets.
| Miners can't sign transactions on users' behalf. You can
| rewrite all of history but then no exchange will accept
| your version of it to let you exchange the tokens for
| fiat. Also this will almost certainly crash the price of
| XMR substantially. And later people will be able to
| fork/restore the original version. The technological side
| of the blockchain is only part of the
| consensus/trust/market/popularity. People are the other
| part, and people will not pay the attacker for their
| successful attack.
| ozlikethewizard wrote:
| surely the fall in value of XMR caused by such an attack
| would make it unprofitable as well
| jcfrei wrote:
| You could just short XMR heavily and profit that way.
| loxs wrote:
| You can only do that on centralized exchanges, which
| would mean that you effectively doxx yourself by
| shorting. Also the exchange will most probably seize your
| funds before you are able to withdraw them.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Not sure how are you doxxing yourself, what stopping me
| from YOLOing my life savings into this short after
| reading a few comments in this thread?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I guess the clearer term for that would be "capital
| intensive".
| dumbfounder wrote:
| Unless they drive the price into the ground.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Right? If an attack like this is successful _and_
| obvious/detectable, then it _should_ drive the price into
| the ground.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Shades of the Hunt brothers attempt to corner the silver
| market in the 80's [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday
| bawolff wrote:
| When people say foo is expensive, they mean the gross cost
| not the net profit.
| devmor wrote:
| If I buy a yacht for $2 millon and sell it for $4 million,
| it's still an expensive yacht. Profit doesn't make it less
| expensive.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| > Whether this is an issue is a matter for debate.
|
| Monero uses RandomX, which is intentionally chosen to make it
| difficult to accelerate using hardware that is common with
| other coins. It's almost certainly not what happened here.
| latchkey wrote:
| CPU was a terrible choice.
| pas wrote:
| why? what's better?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It would be interesting if a "coin" were tied to protein
| folding prediction or something else useful.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| No one is spending $75M a day to do a proof of concept. There's
| obviously some kind of intent to profit.
| fruitworks wrote:
| Qubic aims to profit from the publicity
| lblume wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/p3b7_/status/1955173413992984988
| vlugorilla wrote:
| https://nitter.net/tuxpizza/status/1955191610410401816#m
| typpilol wrote:
| Looks like they are winning.
|
| Looking at that website I see that the unknown pool keeps
| getting a longer chain and it switches to it
| art_vandalay wrote:
| 100% a fed action. Government influence has been pushing Monero
| off of exchanges and now this. Why? Because Monero has true
| anonymity.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Interesting, I don't disagree but would like to learn more.
| ysofunny wrote:
| fiat money has to be a monoply
|
| specially given its only backing is "trust" (trust that you
| won't get invaded or overthrown)
|
| anonymous alt coins, real digital cash, are competition to
| the monetary system. there can be only one.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| If you exchange Bitcoin for cash, the IRS can retroactively
| look at every wallet that this money originated through. If
| they decide that they don't like how certain coins were
| earned, they can mark them and any wallet they touched as
| poisoned, and put you in jail if you try to exchange them
| further.
|
| Monero transactions are inherently obfuscated, which solves
| this problem. If you want more details, the Monero whitepaper
| is well written to be accessible for the common reader.
|
| The tldr is it works atop ring signatures:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature
| vintermann wrote:
| > Monero transactions are inherently obfuscated, which
| solves this problem.
|
| It solves the problem by making all participants culpable.
| The blockchain community is very good at imagining they
| have technical solutions to social problems.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| I don't believe US courts would see it the same way, if
| you use Monero for legitimate transactions you will not
| go to jail.
| googlehater wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
| afan2k wrote:
| By your logic, anyone using cash would be culpable for
| illegal transactions. Same with VPNs/Tor.
| vintermann wrote:
| I think speech is not the same money, and that any kind
| of property you expect others to respect comes with
| obligations. Why should I respect your property claims if
| you can't show me you didn't steal your property?
|
| But that's really beside the point, because it isn't me
| who will come after you, it's the IRS (or equivalent). If
| you spend a lot of money, you're in trouble if you can't
| explain how you got it. And if you explain that you
| participated in a network which has as its only purpose
| to destroy evidence of how you got it, you're usually in
| extra big trouble.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| There's a little bar in Cupertino, Paul & Eddie's Monta
| Vista Inn. They only accept cash. Should they be shut
| down and have their assets seized? After all, what
| possible reason could they have to operate as cash only,
| in Silicon Valley, other than that they want to destroy
| evidence of how they earned it?
| msuniverse2026 wrote:
| What is qubic offering to miners that other pools can't?
| nunobrito wrote:
| Gamification. They are supposedly offered some other shitcoin
| in return for the monero that they mine. I've tried it myself
| some months ago, it is noticeable that they were lying about
| the number of miners on that platform.
| soared wrote:
| Much better link - https://www.cointribune.com/en/qubic-
| hits-52-72-of-moneros-t...
|
| Appears to be legit, but not really a nefarious attack.
| Stevvo wrote:
| That entire article reads like propaganda/doublespeak.
|
| "Planned test". Planned by whom? Planned by the attackers. The
| reorg did happen.
| sigmar wrote:
| >Did Qubic really attack Monero ? No, according to official
| statements, it was a planned stress test to identify
| vulnerabilities in the Monero network.
|
| "not really a nefarious attack" is an insane summation of this
| article. There's zero way for someone outside of qubic to
| verify that they didn't do something nefarious while
| controlling the network. Stated another way- anyone could call
| their 51% attack a "stress test"
| rahen wrote:
| This is odd. The current hash rate is around its nominal 5 GH/s,
| and neither any pool nor individual seems to be above 50%:
|
| https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero
|
| This Qubic group claims to concentrate 3 GH/s of hashing power,
| yet there has been no increase in the global hash rate either:
|
| https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/monero/hashrate-chart
|
| Could this be just a bait?
| znpy wrote:
| dumb question: i took a look at
| https://miningpoolstats.stream/ethereumclassic for
| ethereumclassic and f2pool.com seems to have ~64% of the total
| hashrate... is that a takeover as well ?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I mean, it means that eth classic's ledger is rewritable on a
| whim by that that pool, if it has central control.
| fruitworks wrote:
| Peek the % of unknown miners in the pie chart at the bottom
|
| Also https://moneroconsensus.info/
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Maybe Black Owl is finishing off APT29's remaining part of the
| former Mirai botnet?
|
| I'm just saying that this might be a state sponsored actor
| fighting another one, given that Mirai was primarily hosting XMR
| miners, and given that they lost 3.5 Mio bots overnight in 2023.
| max_ wrote:
| >Sustaining this attack is estimated to cost $75 million per day.
|
| This is how proof of work systems operate.
|
| They are very expensive to attack but very cheap to recover from.
|
| $75m per day is clearly unstainable.
|
| Soon they will give up and the network will recover cheaply.
|
| The attack is more of a nuisance than the end of Monero.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > $75m per day is clearly sustainable.
|
| Is this a typo or am I misunderstanding something?
| transcriptase wrote:
| I'm guessing it's implied that the return would be higher
| than $75m a day.
| max_ wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| "unsustainable"
| m_herrlich wrote:
| now it says unstainable
|
| Also true!
| sschueller wrote:
| Depends what the goal is. A state that wants to break the
| anonymity of the system doesn't care about $75m per day,
| specifically a state that can just print that...
| woah wrote:
| I'm not familiar with Monero's privacy system, so I can't
| say for sure, but it is very, very unlikely that a reorg
| could in any way break anonymity.
| fruitworks wrote:
| Reorgs dont break anonyminity
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The problem is not that the system is constantly under attack.
| It's that it can no longer be trusted to be secure. Nobody with
| money on chain will say 'oh well, probably nobody will steal my
| money today'.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| A 51% attack doesn't let you steal random people's money.
| vlugorilla wrote:
| A 6 re-org does not mean a '51% attack' was successful. In that
| case, we'd see unbounded-depth re-orgs/no blocks mined by any
| other mining pool (assuming the adversary censors other mining
| pools, as this one does).
|
| It does mean an adversary with a high amount of hash got lucky. I
| noted there's a discrepancy between their claimed network
| hashrate and pools' claimed network hash rate.
|
| They may not be including their own hash rate in the network's,
| in which case they'd need to exceed it. Having 51% would only be
| 34% of total.
|
| They're an unreliable narrator and I wouldn't trust any data from
| them. There's insufficient evidence to claim they have 51% of the
| network's hash power.
|
| (https://nitter.net/kayabaNerve/with_replies)
| vlugorilla wrote:
| Qubic never actually hit 51% btw. Don't fall for it.
|
| However they do have a large enough hashrate to perform multi-
| block re-orgs with their selfish mining strategy.
|
| They disabled API hashrate reporting so that they could lie
| about it.
|
| Keep mining and ignore the noise.
|
| (https://nitter.net/tuxpizza/status/1955191610410401816#m)
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| who are "they" you're talking about?
| vlugorilla wrote:
| "They" refers to Qubic (by Sergey Ivancheglo), a blockchain
| network that uses a "Useful Proof-of-Work" system, so it is
| not built for traditional cryptocurrency mining that solves
| arbitrary puzzles. Instead, it uses the collective processing
| power of its miners to train an AI. Qubic's AI-training work
| is performed by CPUs, same as used by RandomX (Monero's
| mining algo).
|
| Qubic was able to orchestrate its network of miners to
| temporarily halt their AI-related tasks and redirect their
| collective CPU power to mine on the Monero network instead.
|
| Also, Qubic has implemented an economic strategy that
| involves selling the Monero it mines for a stablecoin like
| USDT and then using those funds to benefit its own ecosystem
| and attract more miners, and renting hardware to gain more
| hash power. The proceeds from the sale of XMR are used to buy
| Qubic's native token (QUBIC) from exchanges. These purchased
| tokens are then "burned" or permanently removed from
| circulation.
| greazy wrote:
| What's their objective?
| treyd wrote:
| My guess would be to turn the crank of a ponzi scheme
| until it falls off.
|
| However,
|
| > Qubic's AI-training work is performed by CPUs, same as
| used by RandomX (Monero's mining algo).
|
| I don't understand how this makes any sense at all.
| fruitworks wrote:
| I've looked into the "source code", and it doesn't. There
| is no such thing as useful PoW. Qubic isn't actually a
| decentralized cryptocurrency. It's closed source, runs as
| a EFI executable, and is only accessible from their
| discord channel.
|
| The attack is no different than paying miners to join a
| malicious pool. It works as long as money flows in.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| There is such a thing as useful proof of work. Qubic may
| not be doing it but it does exist. The linked papers
| [1][2] are examples of way to do it. They aren't 100%
| "useful" but rather achieve partial efficiency by
| essentially forcing miners down random paths in a manner
| that limits the ability to complete work ahead of time or
| otherwise "cheat".
|
| 1. https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1379
|
| 2. https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1059
| fruitworks wrote:
| I will have to read these papers then. My intuition is
| that it's impossible to usefully use PoW to train neural
| networks because you have to rely on user-submitted
| training data in order to work which allows you to cheat
| by pre-determining the solution to your own work.
|
| It's not a terrible idea, but I've yet to see it be
| inplemented. Gridcoin is one typical example where it's
| just PoS with "useful PoW" tacked on for token
| distribution, and doesn't actually use PoW for security.
| contravariant wrote:
| Proof of useful work feels like it's one and a half steps
| removed from discovering seigniorage and reinventing
| money.
| fruitworks wrote:
| Gain media attention and pump their coin.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This seems oddly similar to the whole IRON/TITAN thing
| years back, but with extra steps.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| What's a "6 re-org"?
| chuckadams wrote:
| The thing about 51% attacks is they're hard to pull off in
| secret. And once they happen, who's going to accept the coin
| anymore? Plenty of potential for sheer destruction, but it seems
| pretty counter-productive to value.
| taylorius wrote:
| Maybe destruction is their goal.
| seanw444 wrote:
| A lot of people would like to see Monero burn.
| chaboud wrote:
| If only someone offered derivatives contracts that could be
| used to make money from destruction...
|
| https://www.kraken.com/en-ca/features/derivatives/monero
| loxs wrote:
| Yeah, but the moment that happens they will confiscate/block
| the funds of the shorters.
| dbdr wrote:
| Based on which specific law or rule?
| SilasX wrote:
| Reminder: if you want to bet on an asset's demise (i.e. short
| it), you don't need a derivatives market, you just need to be
| able to borrow the asset and sell it. So you could accomplish
| the goal there by borrowing Monero and converting it to USD.
| A lot of smartcontract platforms let you do this -- including
| on other chains, where they hold a token convertible into the
| original chain's native unit.
|
| I bring this up because people are always asking what
| platforms are allowing me to short cryptocurrencies, which
| seems to miss that it's enough to just have a debt
| denominated in what you want to bet against.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Unknown crypto vulnerabilities and 51% attacks are crypto
| currency risks that are theoretically out there, but we mostly
| haven't seen play out.
|
| At some point, someone doing AI might amass enough GPUs to do a
| 51% attack on Bitcoin. You're right that it destroys confidence
| in the coin, so if you short Bitcoin futures before the attack,
| you might make money.
| 15155 wrote:
| > At some point, someone doing AI might amass enough GPUs to
| do a 51% attack on Bitcoin.
|
| This is electrically impossible for Bitcoin specifically,
| modern ASICs exceed 3 orders of magnitude more hashes/Joule
| and hashrate/chip than a RTX5090 and cost $2-40 retail per
| chip.
| this_user wrote:
| It's Game Theory problem. If you are getting more value out of
| the system by maintaining it in the long-run, it would make no
| sense to attack it and destroy its value. However, once you can
| extract more value in the short-term through the attack than by
| being a long-term participant, it becomes attractive.
|
| With BTC's block reward continually being reduced, TX fees will
| have to increase in order to avoid reaching the point where
| large miners could become tempted to attack the network.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Monero has been under constant attack from its inception. It's
| one of the only truly anonymous, untraceable payment systems so
| there has been a huge push to make it unviable. It was
| unexplainably delisted from major crypto exchanges in the past
| and now is under direct attack.
| blueprint wrote:
| A couple researchers have told me that it's not necessary to even
| reach 51%. It's probably something closer to 35% to maintain the
| ability to perform censorship etc
| treyd wrote:
| Not quite. You can make selfish mining economically viable
| below 51%, which eats into the profitability of the majority,
| but it's not possible to sustain a long term censorship attack
| with that.
|
| With PoS protocols, >33% is usually when you have the ability
| to inhibit finality, which may be what you're thinking of.
| blueprint wrote:
| they ran numbers on it. Do you have any references to support
| what you're saying?
| api wrote:
| One of the major things that has always bothered me about crypto:
| if an economically "irrational" large player wanted to 51%
| something like Bitcoin, they could.
|
| I am thinking of, for example, a nation-state. Let's say the US,
| EU, or China decided for some reason that it was in their
| national interest to blow up Bitcoin. This could happen if an
| adversary like Russia or its allies were using Bitcoin for
| funding and there was a war or a major Cold War style struggle.
| Such players could afford to purchase and build, in secret, a
| huge mining farm, and then suddenly turn it on, not caring about
| the cost because the goals are strategic. It would be massively
| expensive but it doesn't matter for this case.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| While that's certainly possible with a large enough
| expenditure, they'd also have to have the miners be
| sufficiently indistinguishable that they couldn't easily be
| denylisted with an update to the official codebase.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| The moment anyone does this, people will notice, and the coin
| plummets.
| jacooper wrote:
| Which is what they want.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| at 75 million a day what is the motive?
| spiderice wrote:
| > a nation-state. Let's say the US, EU, or China decided
| for some reason that it was in their national interest to
| blow up Bitcoin
|
| Irrelevant and impossible to "know", given that it hasn't
| happened yet (if it ever does)
| im3w1l wrote:
| A more economical version of the same thing is to engage in
| honest mining through several front companies that together
| have 51%. Until a strategic opportunity presents itself and
| they start colluding.
| api wrote:
| Sure, and this is well within the capabilities of any
| competent large intelligence agency.
|
| It's only a secure system if adversaries are either small or
| economically rational.
| ifwinterco wrote:
| For monero and other smaller chains maybe, but for BTC this
| is already at the point of being quite difficult (the
| intelligence agency really would have to be quite large).
|
| The money is one thing, you also have to somehow acquire a
| huge % of the ASIC supply over years, and the not
| insignificant amount of energy to run them
| corimaith wrote:
| State entities can also destroy real banks with all sorts of
| means if they really want. The vulnerability is real, but
| beyond the scope of discussion because then it's war we're
| talking about.
| SilasX wrote:
| But states generally _like_ having a financial system, and
| don 't like (or are at least annoyed and worried by)
| cryptocurrencies, so the incentives aren't the same.
| 827a wrote:
| I'm also curious about an attack vector whereby if a coin has a
| single reasonably well-installed mining software stack, this
| effectively gives the developers of that stack control over any
| miner, which could easily add up to 51% if there's only a few
| mining software options. Sneaking in a backdoor is well within
| the capabilities of any developer; do the mining companies
| compile from source?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The ridiculousness of cryptocurrency reminds me of the
| ridiculousness of the stock market. Both are absolutely batshit
| insane ways to maintain a global monetary system, yet people keep
| investing their fortunes in both.
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| Sidenote: IDK how is Ledger, a French company, still in business
| after compromising ~300k users' physical addresses[1] amongst
| other PII, ~5 years ago.
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ledgerwalletleak/
| deadbabe wrote:
| What really happens to a crypto coin if trust in the ledger is
| shattered?
|
| Does the coin stay alive purely because people still speculate on
| hype or does everyone try to cash out simultaneously and send
| price into a death spiral?
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