Qubic needs 451 of its 676 Computors to agree on every tick. That one number explains most of how the network works, and it is why I wanted to write about it plainly.
Why Qubic is interesting
Most networks are software that runs on whatever hardware is cheapest. Qubic starts from the machine. Its Computors, the nodes that run the network, must run on bare metal. The official node requirements ask for a dedicated machine with at least 2 TB of RAM and fast NVMe storage, and by the end of 2026 only processors with the AVX-512 instruction set will be supported.
Three more ideas make it worth a closer look.
Ticks, not blocks. The network moves forward in rounds called ticks. Each tick is one batch of transactions the Computors agree on before moving to the next. Ticks add up to epochs of seven days (tokenomics docs).
676 seats, 451 to decide. Any decision needs at least 451 of the 676 Computors, a little over two thirds (whitepaper).
Useful Proof of Work. Mining does not produce ticks. Miners point their computing power at useful work, such as training AI, and how well they do sets each Computor’s ranking for the next epoch (uPoW docs). In 2025 Qubic also pointed that work at another network and mined Monero.
The native coin is QUBIC, the ticker the official docs use. Our apps call it QU, so you will see both. Per the same docs, sending it costs nothing in fees.
How 676 Computors agree
The details below follow the official whitepaper unless another source is linked.
Everyone gets a number
For each epoch, every Computor gets an index from 0 to 675. That number decides who leads which tick.
One leader per tick
To find a tick’s leader, divide the tick number by 676 and keep the remainder. Tick 15,104,383 leaves 515, so Computor 515 leads it. The role rotates through every seat.
The leader prepares the TickData: the list of transactions it plans to include, each referenced by a hash (a short fingerprint of its contents), plus the tick number and a timestamp. It signs the package and sends it out ahead of time.
Check, then vote
Every other Computor checks that the TickData carries the leader’s signature, then makes sure it holds every listed transaction, asking peers for any that are missing. If the TickData never arrives in time, it treats the tick as empty.
Then it votes. Each vote carries a fingerprint of that Computor’s picture of the network: who owns what, and the state of every smart contract. Matching fingerprints mean matching pictures.
451 to move forward
Votes are grouped by content. When one group reaches 451, the tick is final: its transactions run and the network moves on. If 226 or more Computors vote for an empty tick, no other group can reach 451, so the tick is skipped. If no group gets there at all, Qubic stops ticking until it can.
Mining plays no part in this loop. That same official explainer says all mining could stop and the ticks would keep on ticking.
Why 451
Byzantine Fault Tolerance is the classic standard for a network where some members may be broken or lying. A network of N members can cope with just under a third of them being bad: (N minus 1) divided by 3, rounded down. To outvote that many, a decision needs twice that number, plus one.
For Qubic, 676 minus 1 is 675, and 675 divided by 3 is 225. Twice 225, plus 1, is 451. So the network is designed to keep agreeing correctly even if 225 Computors fail or misbehave: honest Computors never accept two versions of the same tick, and the chain keeps moving.
Safeguards on top
A Computor that sends two different versions of the same TickData or vote is marked as faulty, and a role called the Arbitrator can replace it. The Arbitrator also publishes the Computor list each epoch and sets the mining parameters (Arbitrator docs).
That is a lot of power in one place, and the docs are frank that who controls the Arbitrator is not publicly known. The check is the same number again: a supermajority of 451 Computors can override it.
The quorum under pressure
In October 2026 an attacker drained 1,404 wallets whose seeds, the secret phrases behind them, had been created without enough randomness on some device and browser combinations. Computors halted the network, and on October 20 the quorum approved a recovery plan and ticking resumed. Qubic’s official post says the protocol was never breached and the flaw was in one step of the wallet software. Affected users can use the reclaim portal.
What we built
At 10102 we built Computing Qubic, a set of small apps for Qubic holders and the people they bring in. Everything runs in your browser against the public Qubic network. There is no contract to approve, no account to open, and 10102 holds no funds.
Gift is live. Your browser creates a fresh Qubic address, you fund it from any wallet, then share a link or QR code. Whoever opens it claims the coins into their own wallet. Gift makes the seed with your browser’s secure random generator (Web Crypto). A gift link still works like cash: without a PIN, anyone holding it can claim. So add a PIN and keep gifts small.
Raffle is in beta. The prize sits at a public address anyone can watch, the entrant list comes from the chain, and the winner is drawn from a future tick anyone can re-run. One honest limit: the organizer holds the prize key, so entrants trust the organizer to pay, not 10102.
Weekly is a plain-language audit of the Qubic ecosystem: security, adoption, growth and what is missing. It uses public sources only and is not affiliated with the Qubic core team. The first report is out.
Legacy is coming later.
Then there is qubic.eth, 10102’s own static page about Qubic: our thesis, and a starting point for newcomers, builders and watchers. It is stored on IPFS, a peer-to-peer file network, under qubic.eth, a name on Ethereum’s naming service (ENS). It is our page, not an official Qubic site. For the longer read, our Qubic deep dive covers the wider ecosystem.
What comes next
This post started as a consensus chapter I drafted and never published, and it is also the first time I have introduced our Qubic work here. Next in the series: Useful Proof of Work, a week of ticks and epochs up close, transactions and smart contracts, and notes from building Gift and Raffle.
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Not financial advice.