Monero's Blockchain Faces Unprecedented Reorganization, Rendering 118 Transactions Invalid

On Sunday, Monero's blockchain underwent a profound 18-block reorganization, marking the deepest instance to date. This reorganization resulted in the invalidation of 118 previously confirmed transactions, effectively reversing 36 minutes of transaction history. The reorganization commenced at block height 3,499,659 when Qubic, an AI-focused layer-1 blockchain, introduced a longer chain that was accepted by Monero's network nodes, thereby orphaning the previously confirmed blocks of the other chain. This move represents the latest development in Qubic's campaign, which last month garnered more than half of Monero's mining power. Qubic employs a 'useful proof-of-work' model, repurposing XMR mining rewards to acquire USDT, which is then used to buy back and burn QUBIC tokens. Notably, despite the rollback, XMR's price exhibited unexpected resilience, surging to a two-month high of $333 following the attack before experiencing a slight decline to $307.5. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency remains up by over 6.4% in the last 24 hours, with its daily trading volume increasing by 78% to $136 million. A crypto commentator, Vini Barbosa, expressed concerns regarding the reliability of the Monero network, stating, 'Personally, I don't consider the Monero network reliable at this point.' Barbosa added that he would cease accepting XMR payments until the issue is resolved. Furthermore, he noted, 'In the last 720 blocks (~24h), 213 blocks have been orphaned (114 produced by known pools and 99 produced by unknown pools or solo miners). That's 29.5% of all blocks. This is just too much.' The attack may prompt the Monero community to make challenging decisions, with one proposed solution involving the use of DNS checkpoints, trusted snapshots of the blockchain, to counteract future reorganizations. However, critics argue that this approach would compromise the network's decentralization. On GitHub, crypto researcher Rucknium pointed out that the temporary rollout of DNS checkpoints is highly likely to soon be deployed.