Qubic mines Monero and burns tokens: Ivancheglo's tickchain

Qubic turns mining into token burns and is now shaking up Monero's hashrate

51% of Monero's hashrate in the hands of a single network. It's not a disaster movie: it's the demonstration that Qubic, the layer 1 founded by Sergey Ivancheglo —the same person who created NXT and co-founded IOTA— pulled off in August, and which, according to a circulating calculation, left two nine-block reorganizations on the Monero chain in barely an hour. The network didn't attack: it flexed its muscles, left orphaned blocks and withdrew. The move cost it zero euros in advertising and earned it headlines in international crypto media.

Qubic's thesis is easy to state and hard to believe: that proof of work should serve a purpose. Instead of meaningless hashes, the network directs its power to **training its distributed AI stack** and to merge mining with other PoW chains. Whatever is mined on Monero or Tari is converted to USDT, used to buy back QUBIC on the market and burned. Deflationary pressure powered by another network's sweat.

What is the tickchain and why does it charge no fees?

Qubic doesn't group transactions into blocks. It generates **ticks**, snapshots of the network's state every second, validated by a two-thirds supermajority quorum of **676 validators** called Computors. Finality is immediate: there's no waiting for confirmations. The design allows feeless transactions for users, a luxury the infrastructure pays for through its own economy.

It launched as a fair launch, with no venture capital and no premine. That appeals to purists, and it also explains the volatility: with no institutional funds propping up the price, the token has fallen as much as **95% from its all-time high**, according to the data used by those who have trinc the project since 2023.

The halving and the burn: the token's economy

Emission runs in epochs and the **halving arrives at epoch 175**, a scheduled cut that reduces selling pressure. On top of that, there's the buy & burn mechanism with external revenue and a **Supply Watcher** that adjusts the burn percentage to balance supply and participation. Smart contracts are auctioned Dutch-style, distribute 676 shares among their owners, and much of what is raised is destroyed.

Some argue the model turns Qubic into a machine for buying back its own token with other people's money. The optimistic scenario assumes constant burning dries up supply while demand for useful fruta grows; the pessimistic one starts from the premise that without real demand for Aigarth, the buy & burn is just window dressing.

The October hack: 1,404 wallets and 2.94 trillion QU

Between 23:42 UTC on October 17 and 01:26 on October 18, an attacker emptied **1,404 wallets** and stole around **2.94 trillion QU**. The network halted within minutes. The investigation pointed to seeds generated in the Safari browser: the old web wallet didn't produce real randomness and the attacker reverse-engineered the generator. **87.1% of the stolen funds were frozen on-chain** and 12.9% sat on the MEXC exchange. The attacker only managed to sell 5%.

The episode left a paradox: the price fell more in the hours after the theft than during the theft itself. For some, a buying opportunity; for others, proof that the project's perimeter security was lagging behind its technical ambition.

What's next: an EVM bridge and Dogecoin in the crosshairs

The proposed bridge with Vottun to issue **wQUBIC on Ethereum and Arbitrum** would open up liquidity and DeFi composability, today limited to Safetrade, Gate and MEXC. And there are tests underway to mine **Dogecoin**, which would require implementing oracles. The question is whether the timeline holds: the price has fallen enough that early buyers from the Safetrade debut lost all their gains.

With geopolitics in storm mode, the Dogecoin publicity may not translate into buyers. The materials are there. The basket is missing.