Bull turned true? A brief review of the Qubic double spending attack incident

Some follow-ups: Exciting, this is psychological warfare. Since last week when $XMR was officially announced by Qubic to be under a 51% attack, the community has drawn several conclusions in hindsight:

1. Qubic did not actually possess 51% of the hashing power during the so-called 51% attack last week, but only temporarily reached around 35% for a short period.

2. Qubic continuously mined 6 XMR blocks, suspected of selfish mining.

Selfish mining refers to the situation where one mines a block but holds back from publishing it. Instead, they wait until they have mined six blocks in a row to create the longest chain. This causes the honest miners' 5 blocks (the second longest chain) to become invalid, achieving a double spend.

PS: I roughly sketched a draft that looks okay.

In fact, even if I only have 1% of the hashing power, theoretically I could mine 6 blocks, although the probability is very small, while a 35% hashing power has a fairly large probability.

I did a simple calculation. This is just a natural probability; based on Monero's 1440 blocks a day, a 35% hash rate mathematically expects to successfully attack 2.6 times a day.

This doesn't even account for the bonus from selfish mining; if included, it would be even higher. Otherwise, Qubic might not be willing to spend money to rent computing power to impact 6 blocks in a short period.

Why is this model called selfish? It is because when mining blocks, in order to ensure the success rate, they often do not include transactions, resulting in many empty blocks, which wastes block space.

Back to the point, and Qubic also does not have double spending. Many exchanges require 10 block confirmations for XMR deposits, and of course, it has no motivation to actually attack.

So you can understand that Qubic neither has 51% hash power nor a 51% attack; it just flexed its muscles a bit and then issued a press release, claiming to have completed a 51% attack.

But why is it called psychological warfare? Because when the event occurred, many miners actually surrendered and joined the Qubic mining pool, resulting in Qubic's hashrate temporarily exceeding 50% as of yesterday.

So this is not a battle of computing power, but a battle of psychology.

This is a kind of deterrent against miners - if you do not join the Qubic mining pool, the blocks you mine in the future may become invalid, affecting your harvest; if you join, although it is aiding the oppressor, not only will you incur losses, but even miners who double-mine are not all tough; many still have to consider the economic accounts.

Immediately afterwards, they announced that the next target is Dogecoin. However, I think Dogecoin is based on Litecoin mining machines, which have ASIC, so it may not be that simple. But they are masters of psychological warfare. Therefore, this announcement itself might be a new form of psychological warfare.

Amazing, this is called "Fake it till you make it". It's hard to translate; if translated literally, it would be: "First pretend to blow it up until, while blowing, it actually becomes true."