August 3, 2025, a crypto mining pool called Qubic claimed it was hit by a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack after launching an aggressive bid to gain control of the Monero blockchain. While no impact was observed on the Monero network itself, the events raised new questions about the intersection of cyber attacks, economic rivalry, and decentralisation. Here’s a brief introduction to the actors, and the alleged course of events.
What Is Monero?
Monero (XMR) is a privacy-first cryptocurrency designed to be decentralized, untraceable, and censorship-resistant. It uses advanced cryptography to hide sender, receiver, and transaction amounts. These features make Monero popular for both legitimate privacy use and illicit transactions.
Monero is mined using standard CPUs and GPUs, with algorithms designed to resist specialized ASIC hardware. To maintain network integrity, Monero relies on a decentralized group of miners. If a single pool gains more than 50% of the hashrate, it could potentially censor transactions — an event known as a 51% attack.
What Is Qubic?
Qubic is a separate crypto project run by Sergey Ivancheglo (a.k.a. Come-from-Beyond), previously a founder of IOTA and NXT. The Qubic ecosystem incentivises users to mine other cryptocurrencies like Monero, while being paid in Qubic tokens.
According to Qubic’s own statements, Monero mining profits are used to fund Qubic’s internal token economy — including token buybacks and burns. This created a financial incentive to gain significant hashrate on Monero’s network.
The Qubic Takeover Attempt
In July 2025, the Qubic mining pool rapidly rose to dominate a significant portion of the Monero network’s hashrate — reportedly as high as 35–40% at its peak.
On social media, Ivancheglo made it clear: Qubic intended to centralize Monero mining by rejecting blocks from other pools. This sparked a strong backlash from the Monero community, who encouraged miners to switch to smaller, decentralized pools like P2Pool and SupportXMR.
By late July, Qubic’s hashrate had dropped significantly — and by July 30, it stopped reporting public hashrate data altogether.
The Alleged DDoS Attack
On August 3, Ivancheglo claimed on X that the Qubic mining pool was under a DDoS attack, causing hashrate to fall from 2.6 GH/s to 0.8 GH/s. He implied that the attack came from Monero-aligned actors, possibly using a botnet previously used for Monero mining malware.
In a follow-up post, he alleged that Sergei Chernykh, lead developer of the popular XMRig Monero mining software, was behind the attack. Chernykh denied involvement, calling the accusation defamation. He added that while he opposes Qubic’s actions, he has never advocated for illegal countermeasures.
Meanwhile, external parties were unable to verify any ongoing DDoS activity. Qubic pool endpoints responded within normal latency ranges, and no outages were detected. At the same time, public tracking sites continued to show Qubic’s hashrate at or near 0 GH/s, adding to the speculation.
DDoS as a Competitive Tool — and a PR Weapon
DDoS attacks are a well-known tactic in competitive and high-stakes environments — especially in industries like gaming, crypto, or digital finance, where uptime equals revenue. Whether motivated by profit, disruption, or retaliation, DDoS attacks can force services offline or undermine user trust.
But publicly claimed DDoS attacks are often difficult to verify post-mortem. Without access to traffic logs or packet-level data, outside observers rely on second-hand reports or circumstantial evidence (like latency spikes or service unavailability). In this case, technical checks showed no clear evidence of disruption — raising questions about whether the DDoS happened, whether it had already ended, or whether the claim served another purpose.
This incident highlights the increasingly blurred lines between:
- Technical attacks
- Economic pressure
- Public relations narratives
- And organizational rivalry
It’s a reminder that DDoS is not always just a technical event — it can be a tool of influence, misdirection, or defensive spin. Whether the Qubic DDoS attack was real, exaggerated, or strategically framed remains unresolved. But it offers a textbook case of how DDoS threats can be entangled with reputation battles, market manipulation, and protocol-level governance conflicts.
About FastNetMon
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