Reviewing the Monero coin being attacked by Qubic: Is AI really the true grave digger of POW?

Author: Haotian

Monero (XMR), a leading privacy coin project with a market cap of 6 billion, was surprisingly attacked with 51% of the hash power by a small project called Qubic, which only has a market cap of 300 million? WTF, it's really not because of how advanced the technology is, but this situation is just too absurd. Let me explain.

Who is the divine being of Qubic?

Before telling this magical story, I need to explain what Qubic is.

The founder of Qubic is Sergey Ivancheglo, known in the industry as Come-from-Beyond. He is a tech fanatic—having created the first PoS blockchain NXT and developed the first DAG architecture IOTA. In 2022, the Qubic mainnet went live, claiming to achieve three things: to build a super-fast chain capable of 15.5 million transactions per second (20,000 times faster than Visa), to transform mining computing power into AI training power, and ultimately to realize AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) by 2027 (something even OpenAI wouldn't dare to shout). Sounds quite magical and absurd, doesn't it? Why such great ambition?

It is well known that traditional POW mining is criticized for wasting electricity, as most mining mechanisms involve miners using power-consuming computing power to solve mathematical problems to seize Reward blocks, which essentially wastes computing power in exchange for rewards.

Qubic's new consensus is Useful Proof of Work (UPow), which allows miners to mine on the POW chain while, under the scheduling of their contractor, they can also train their AI system AIGarth, effectively earning two incomes from one unit of computing power.

This is why they can easily buy off Monero miners, as the profits given to miners once reached three times that of directly mining XMR. Think about it, miners can have their cake and eat it too; what "loyalty" is there in the face of "interests."

Alright, the underlying logic of how this Monero coin was attacked by vampires has been explained without any technical content.

Let's popularize the concept a bit: why Monero and not Bitcoin.

The answer actually lies in the differences in mining methods.

ASIC miners used for Bitcoin are custom machines specifically designed to mine BTC, and they can only solve SHA-256 math problems or mine coins that are similar to BTC's algorithm. But the problem is, the competition for mining BTC is so intense that miners are stretched thin (operating 24 hours a day), not to mention that training AI with ASICs is simply not possible.

Monero is different; it uses the RandomX algorithm, which allows for mining with general-purpose CPUs. This means that its miners can mine today, train AI tomorrow, and render videos the day after, completely able to take on multiple roles.

The cleverness of Qubic lies in this: it targets CPU miners, allowing them to be "dual-purpose," which led to this 51% hash power attack or control incident. On the contrary, Bitcoin's moat is very stable; miners are stuck with limited ASIC miners, forcing them to stick to mining Bitcoin.

The computing power has become mercenaries.

So how terrifying is the impact of this matter? It has torn apart the last veil of shame for some POW chains, because we always say that "hash power" is a moat for a chain, the greater the hash power, the more secure it is. However, Qubic, through a shocking experiment, tells us: for coins that use CPU/GPU mining, hash power is just a mercenary; whoever pays more will be followed.

What's even more outrageous is that after Qubic proved it could take down Monero, it chose to withdraw voluntarily. Why? Because it was afraid that completely crashing Monero would affect its own profits. A significant portion of the 3x returns still comes from mining XMR, and $QUBIC is merely an additional token reward. If Monero crashes, Qubic won't be able to walk away unscathed either. It’s better to withdraw gracefully, create a sensational marketing event, and humiliate the former staunch supporters of POW. This feeling of "I could kill you but I won’t" seems to echo the rebellious sentiment of their AGI slogan, doesn’t it?

Is AI really the true grave digger of POW?

However, aside from the impact of the Monero incident, this is actually a significant negative for most general-purpose hardware POW chains, because if these POW chains are doomed, it may not be POS that kills them, but possibly AI.

Why do I say this? In the past, computing power was "solid," and everyone focused on their own livelihood. Now, in the AI era, computing power has been completely "liquefied." CPU and GPU computing power flows like water, only reaching places with higher returns. The "miners" who relied on this for survival may find themselves revolting one day.

Although Qubic has not done anything evil, once the experiment is successful, it is inevitable that some competitors will use this method for malicious attacks, such as shorting a certain coin first and then renting 51% of the computing power to attack, waiting for the coin price to plummet before taking profits. There are only two paths for such chains: either lock miners down like BTC or continue to mine with CPU/GPU and pray not to be targeted.

To be honest, there are quite a lot of coins like this, Grin, Beam, Haven Protocol, ETC, RVN, Conflux...... So you see, this is not just a problem of one or two coins, but the entire CPU/GPU mining ecosystem is hanging on the edge of a cliff.

The problem is that the demand for AI computing power is growing exponentially, and with so many AI computing aggregation platforms emerging, if they all come in to disrupt the market with sky-high prices and platform incentives to purchase computing power, it is estimated that the security defenses of many POW chains will collapse.

A satirical paradox

The reason I say this matter is absurd is that Qubic itself is an AI chain. Even if it withdraws its so-called experiment attacking Monero, it cannot avoid self-damage. The logic is simple: any AI chain that requires computing power should not use PoW for consensus. This is because if computing power is used to maintain security, AI cannot be trained; if computing power is used to train AI, the chain becomes insecure.

Therefore, most AI projects use PoS like Bittensor, and Render uses a reputation system. Almost no one dares to touch POW, and everyone knows this well. Unexpectedly, Qubic foolishly showcased its own weakness.

Qubic's recent maneuver appears to be a technical event on the surface, but in essence, it has taught the entire Crypto industry a lesson: in an era of free-flowing computing power, loyalty is a luxury, and most PoW chains cannot afford this price.

Qubic has demonstrated that traditional PoW can be easily defeated by economic incentives through this attack. Although it claims to be "useful PoW" itself, it essentially relies on these "mercenary" computing powers that can be bought by higher bidders at any time.

Revolutionaries may also be revolutionized by the next revolutionary.

Note: Beyond the absurdity and the unknown panic of some POW chains shivering, everyone can indeed confirm two facts: 1. BTC is really impressive; 2. Vitalik Buterin truly has foresight.