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Inside Qubic’s Selfish Mining Campaign on Monero: Evidence, Tactics, and Limits

Authors: Suhyeon Lee and Hyeongyeong Kim

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 395, 8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026)


Abstract
In 2025, the blockchain network Qubic conducted a mining campaign on Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It publicly presented the campaign as a "51% takeover" and a demonstration of selfish mining. The episode provides a rare opportunity to test such claims in a privacy-preserving proof-of-work network, where pool attribution and private release decisions are difficult to observe. We combine Monero node measurements, Qubic pool observations, community-shared artifacts, and disclosed view keys to attribute blocks and identify candidate withholding periods. Rather than sustained majority control, we observe elevated orphaning and deeper reorganizations. Qubic did not follow a single optimized selfish mining strategy, instead varying between standard selfish mining and more defensive block-release decisions. Across the campaign, it gained no reward advantage over honest mining. Community monitoring and Qubic’s countermeasures reveal how real-world mining campaigns evolve in response to an active ecosystem. Overall, the campaign disrupted Monero without exhibiting a stable profit-maximizing strategy, leaving open disruptive incentives beyond direct mining rewards.

Cite as

Suhyeon Lee and Hyeongyeong Kim. Inside Qubic’s Selfish Mining Campaign on Monero: Evidence, Tactics, and Limits. In 8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 395, pp. 28:1-28:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{lee_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2026.28,
  author =	{Lee, Suhyeon and Kim, Hyeongyeong},
  title =	{{Inside Qubic’s Selfish Mining Campaign on Monero: Evidence, Tactics, and Limits}},
  booktitle =	{8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026)},
  pages =	{28:1--28:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-451-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{395},
  editor =	{Kiayias, Aggelos and Kyropoulou, Maria},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2026.28},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-278821},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2026.28},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain, Proof-of-Work, Selfish Mining, Monero}
}

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