Normie Token Drops 99% After Smart Contract Exploitation

The value of the Normie token (NORMIE) plunged 99% in three hours after falling victim to a smart contract exploit, which temporarily reduced its market cap from $42 million to $200,000.

Following the exploit, the developers of the meme coin Base are in discussions with the individual responsible for the incident to recover 90% of the stolen funds.

The hacker’s offer

Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain was the first to spot the hacker’s exploit and offering.

The $NORMIE exploiter sent a message to Normie Deployer.

The condition for returning 90% of mined ETH is that he and the 600 $ETH in the developer wallet are used to fairly launch a new token to refund $NORMIE headlines.https://t.co/vmrXdgFMa2 pic.twitter.com/L7UkVbxZOe

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 26, 2024

In a chain message to Normie’s deployer address on May 26, the hacker offered to return 90% of the stolen NORMIE tokens, stipulating that the remaining 10% would be kept as a bug bounty without retaliation

The hacker also demanded that the stolen funds, along with the 600 ETH worth approximately $3,900 in the team’s development wallet, be used to launch a new token to refund NORMIE holders.

“We’re going to have to relaunch, yeah,” Normie’s team said via a newly established X account following the suspension of their main. “This will come after we get our main Twitter account back and after we receive the exploiter’s funds,” Normie added. However, the temporary account was also suspended soon after.

Meanwhile, the hacker would not commit to their strict terms, insisting that a token relaunch must precede the return of funds. “The development portfolio did much more than I did during this exploit, and I have no other way to ensure that these funds are used properly,” they stated in another message on the chain.

The consequences of exploitation

Quick Intel, a blockchain scam detection tool, reported that the exploit affected 72,000 NORMIE holders.

🚨 ALERT!

72,000 $NORMIE headlines were hit by smart contract vulnerabilities last night! ShadowShield discovered this vulnerability in March.

That’s why we exist, to show you what the smart contract actually says.

No one deserves to be scammed. pic.twitter.com/AbtsIPqyji

— Quick Intel (@quickintel_ai) May 26, 2024

Lookonchain also revealed that an anonymous trader who had invested $1.16 million to acquire 11.23 million NORMIE tokens during the cryptocurrency’s peak is now facing a substantial loss. Their initial investment of $1.16 million, which they kept unsold until now, is now worth less than $150.

According to data from CoinGecko, NORMIE’s price plummeted by more than 92% in the first hour of the attack, and further plummeted by 99.5% after two and a half hours. Despite a brief surge in prices, the cryptocurrency continued its decline, bottoming out at $0.00022, representing a 98.2% drop from its all-time high.

However, Normie has since shown signs of recovery. At the time of writing, its market cap is $1,043,837 and its price is $0.001053, a 57% increase in the last 24 hours.

NORMIE launched amid the frenzy of meme coin mania on Base in March 2024 and reached a market cap of $130 million on April 2, according to data from CoinGecko.

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