Zcash defied the crypto market downturn with a 45% rally this week, making it the most valuable privacy-focused cryptocurrency, following Hayes’ call for a $10,000 price target. Some of the leading privacy coins are defying the gravity of the digital asset market, signaling growing investor demand for privacy-focused cryptocurrencies. Zcash (ZEC) surged to an over eight-year high of $388 on Friday after rising 7.6% in the last 24 hours, according to data aggregator CoinMarketCap. With a $6.2 billion market capitalization at the time of writing, ZEC flipped Monero (XMR) to become the most valuable privacy-focused cryptocurrency. ZEC’s 45% weekly rise bucked the broader crypto market downturn, which continued its consolidation after a much-awaited tariff deal between the US and China failed to materialize on Thursday. Read more
Several solutions have been proposed to bolster Monero’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism to prevent 51% attacks on the network. The Monero community is exploring a potential overhaul of its proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to make the network resistant to 51% attacks. Community members suggested several proposals, including localizing mining hardware, switching to a merge mining algorithm, allowing XMR to be mined alongside Bitcoin (BTC) or other major cryptocurrencies, and adopting Dash’s ChainLocks solution. Dash’s ChainLocks uses “randomly selected masternodes” to reach a quorum on the first valid block broadcast by the network, locking the blockchain ledger into place and appending the chain only with blocks verified through the ChainLock system. This would function on top of the existing PoW Consensus. Read more
The community for Qubic, an AI-focused blockchain project, voted to target the Dogecoin network over Zcash and Kaspa by a wide margin. The community for Qubic, the AI-focused blockchain project that executed a 51% attack on Monero this week and gained majority control of the network’s computing power, has voted to target Dogecoin (DOGE) next. Sergey Ivancheglo, the founder of the Qubic network, asked the Qubic community which application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-enabled, proof-of-work blockchain the group should target with its next 51% attack, including DOGE, Kaspa (KAS), and Zcash (ZEC). “The Qubic community has chosen Dogecoin,” Ivancheglo, who goes by the online handle Come-from-Beyond, wrote in a Sunday X post announcing the results of the vote. Read more
Withdrawals and trading for Monero (XMR) on the Kraken exchange remain open, and deposits will resume once it is safe, the exchange said. Crypto exchange Kraken has temporarily paused Monero (XMR) deposits due to the ongoing 51% attack against the privacy-focused blockchain, which has compromised the security of the network. A 51% attack occurs when one mining pool controls more than 50% of a blockchain network’s total hashing power, giving it the ability to double-spend and reorder transactions on the ledger. The Kraken exchange wrote on Friday: Qubic, a layer-1 AI-focused blockchain and mining pool, claimed it controlled the majority of Monero’s hashrate on Monday and reorganized six blocks, prompting denials of the attack from the Monero community. Read more
Qubic claims it has achieved 51% control of Monero’s hashrate, prompting debate over whether the resulting six-block reorganization was a successful attack. Update (Aug. 12, 2025, at 1:30 pm UTC): This article has been updated to add a Qubic announcement. Layer-1 blockchain Qubic said it has “completed its attempt to dominate the Monero network,” claiming a month-long push culminated Monday with 51% control of Monero’s hashrate. According to a Monday blog post, the “month-long, high-stakes technical confrontation” concluded with Qubic reaching 51% of Monero’s hashrate. The effort coincided with a six-block-deep chain reorganization that discarded 60 previously valid blocks, according to the Monero Consensus Status dashboard. Read more
The Qubic mining pool, which is attempting a 51% takeover of Monero, is allegedly being hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack linked to the Monero community. Update (Aug. 4, 2025, at 1:50 pm UTC): This article has been updated to add commentary by XMRig developer Sergei Chernykh. A mining pool behind an attempted 51% takeover of Monero is reportedly under a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, disrupting the effectiveness of its attempt. In a Sunday X post, Sergey Ivancheglo, who claims responsibility for the takeover attempt, said the Qubic mining pool he controls is under a DDoS attack. He added that the attack resulted in the mining pool’s hashrate falling from 2.6 gigahashes per second down to 0.8 GH/s. Read more
Monero is facing a controversial, economically powered hashrate takeover attempt by Qubic, a mining pool and crypto network led by Iota co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo. Privacy-focused Monero is facing what appears to be an attempted network takeover by former top mining pool Qubic, prompting community backlash and concerns over hashrate centralization. As of Monday, Qubic had fallen from the top spot on the Monero (XMR) mining pool rankings to seventh, according to MiningPoolStats data. After the community noticed the pool looked to be openly performing a network takeover, the pool’s hashrate plummeted until it fell into its current position as the seventh-largest XMR mining pool. In a June 30 blog post, Qubic revealed that it had begun incentivizing Monero CPU mining via its own network. The mined XMR would then be used to fund buybacks and token burns for the Qubic ecosystem. “QUBIC miners now perform real-world tasks (Monero mining) that generate real market value, which in turn strengthens the QUBIC economy...