The Monero community is considering a major revision of its proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to enhance the network’s resistance to 51% attacks.
Community members have put forward various proposals, such as localizing mining hardware, transitioning to a merge mining algorithm, allowing XMR to be mined simultaneously with Bitcoin (BTC) or other prominent cryptocurrencies, and implementing Dash’s ChainLocks solution.
Dash’s ChainLocks employs “randomly selected masternodes” to achieve a consensus on the first valid block announced by the network, securing the blockchain ledger and extending the chain solely with blocks authenticated through the ChainLock mechanism. This would operate above the current PoW Consensus.
ChainLocks mitigates 51% network attacks and block reorganizations, even if the suggested blocks originate from selfish or malicious miners with a higher accumulated proof-of-work than the ChainLocks authenticated chain, Joel Valenzuela, Dash DAO core member, informed Cointelegraph. He also cautioned:
“The Qubic attack is an intriguing experiment that essentially takes advantage of vulnerabilities in mined security models, especially in their economics, and particularly for chains that lack application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Any ASIC-resistant chain should have concerns.
Even those utilizing ASICs need to ensure their economic priorities are correctly aligned, or face attacks,” Valenzuela added. Qubic, an AI-driven blockchain and mining pool, announced that it gained 51% control over Monero in August, raising concerns that the community might target other proof-of-work blockchains.
Related: Qubic community, Monero’s 51% attacker, votes to target Dogecoin next
Qubic becomes the largest Monero mining pool, community votes to target DOGE next
The Qubic mining pool currently possesses 2.18 gigahashes per second (GH/s), making it the miner with the highest hashing power on the Monero network, according to MiningPoolStats.
Supportxmr stands as the second-largest mining pool in terms of hashing power, holding 1.18 GH/s of computational strength at the time of this writing.
Monero’s community remains split regarding the attack, with a segment of Monero users asserting that Qubic never achieved majority control over the network’s hashing power and only executed a limited block reorganization, rather than a complete takeover of the network.
Despite the denials, Kraken, a significant crypto exchange, announced it was temporarily halting Monero deposits, and in a subsequent update, Kraken reactivated deposits but stated that 720 confirmations are essential before crediting accounts with XMR.
“Given the current unpredictability regarding the security of the Monero network due to substantial consolidation of hash rate under a single entity, Kraken may suspend deposits at any moment and delay crediting at its discretion,” the exchange stated in an update on Monday.
On Sunday, the Qubic community voted to target Dogecoin (DOGE) as its next mining objective, garnering over 300 votes from community members — surpassing all other options combined.
Following the vote, Sergey Ivancheglo, the founder of the Qubic network, clarified that DOGE mining “requires months of development,” while the mining pool is currently concentrating on mining XMR.
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