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18 Block Reorg Slams Monero, Erasing 36 Minutes Of Blockchain

Monero’s privateness chain endured its deepest-ever chain reorganization within the final 24 hours, when 18 consecutive blocks had been changed, briefly “rewriting” roughly 36 minutes of ledger historical past and invalidating about 118 already-confirmed transactions. Multiple unbiased screens flagged the occasion late Sunday into Monday, describing a rollback spanning block heights 3,499,659 by way of 3,499,676 earlier than nodes converged on a brand new greatest chain. With Monero focusing on two-minute blocks, an 18-block reorg interprets to ~36 minutes of historical past—a unprecedented depth for a mature proof-of-work community.

Monero Hit By Record 18 Block Reorg

“The assault in opposition to Monero is again. Hours in the past XMR skilled an 18-block reorg. If you settle for XMR make sure that to attend for greater than the standard 10 confs,” warned unbiased monitor OrangeFren as alerts circulated throughout crypto social channels. The submit, amplified by a number of business accounts, captured the speedy operational takeaway for retailers and providers: elevate affirmation thresholds till circumstances normalize.

The incident comes a month after the controversial AI-oriented project Qubic claimed to have marshaled a majority of Monero’s hashrate, a marketing campaign that coincided with a six-block reorg in August and led to momentary deposit suspensions at some exchanges. Security researchers on the time cautioned that the August occasion didn’t, by itself, show sustained 51% dominance—streaks of mining “luck” can produce quick, probabilistic reorganizations—however in addition they warned that persistent hashrate focus raises the ceiling on how deep such reorgs can go. Monday’s 18-block episode materially raises that ceiling.

Community voices reacted with a mixture of alarm and realism. SlowMist founder Yu Xian commented through X: “If nobody within the Monero neighborhood takes the problem of block reorganization critically, then this Sword of Damocles will all the time hold over Monero’s head… It could not essentially perform a double-spend assault, however having this functionality… It doesn’t even need to strictly exceed 51% of the hash energy…”

Qubic founder Sergey Ivancheglo, who is understood by the alias “Come-from-Beyond”, posted through X: “Monero will keep as a result of Qubic needed it to remain.”

At a technical degree, a series reorg happens when two legitimate histories compete and the community finally converges on the one with essentially the most accrued proof-of-work, discarding the opposite and any transactions unique to it. In Monero’s design, two-minute goal block intervals and dynamic block sizing intention to maintain throughput easy whereas preserving privateness primitives like ring signatures and stealth addresses.

In apply, nevertheless, a miner or pool with outsized hashpower can—a minimum of in bursts—privately prolong a facet chain after which launch it, “out-working” the general public tip and forcing nodes to reorganize. That is what seems to have occurred right here, with a depth that exceeded the de facto 10-confirmation consolation zone generally utilized by wallets and exchanges.

The August–September sequence has re-opened a contentious debate inside Monero about defenses. Proposals span the spectrum: “rolling 10-block checkpoints” that finalize current blocks to cap reorg depth; adopting parts akin to Dash’s ChainLocks to bolt on a finality layer; “detective mining” incentives to counter selfish-mining methods on the pool degree; and even merge-mining ideas that might piggyback Monero’s safety on a bigger PoW base.

Each trade-off is sharp: checkpoints and ChainLocks introduce levels of centralization or new belief assumptions, whereas pool-level modifications could also be inconsistently adopted. The neighborhood has not but coalesced round a selected repair, however the urgency has unmistakably elevated.

Markets handled the occasion with shocking resilience. (*36*) hours, XMR rallied between roughly 5% and seven%, buying and selling above $300 on some venues.

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