Normie, a meme coin on Ethereum’s Layer 2 network Base, experienced a severe exploit, causing its token value to plummet by 99%.
The project’s team acknowledged the breach and agreed to the attacker’s proposal to return the stolen assets.
Normie’s Market Capitalization Free Falls
An attacker exploited a vulnerability in Normie’s contract tax mechanism, conducting a flash loan attack drastically increasing the meme coin’s token supply. This exploit caused a 99% drop in the token’s value while the market cap from approximately $41 million to around $1.3 million.
Lookonchain highlighted the severe impact on traders. The analyst noted that a trader whose $1.16 million investment in NORMIE is now worth less than $150. Similarly, many other token holders expressed their significant losses on the project’s official Telegram channel.
Meanwhile, crypto exchange LBank reported an influx of Normie token deposits, suggesting a connection to the exploit.
“We’ve noticed a large number of unusual NORMIE token deposits, possibly linked to an exploit. We urge the project team to contact us with details about the addresses involved and potential solutions,” LBank stated.
Normie Market Capitalization. Source: CoinGecko
Interestingly, the attacker has offered to return 90% of the stolen assets if the project launched a new token to compensate affected holders.
In response, the Normie team accepted this proposal and assured there would be no reprisals. Additionally, the project stated that all the ETH in its development wallet would be committed to the recovery effort. On-chain data shows that the Normie developer wallet currently holds about 736 ETH, valued at approximately $11.7 million.
“Exploiter, we accept your offer to return 90% of the exploited ETH. You may keep 10%, no reprisals. All $ETH from the normie dev wallet will be used to rectify this situation and assist in our relaunch,” Normie’s team stated.
Normie is a memecoin launched on Base in March during the meme coin frenzy that swept the blockchain network following the introduction of the Dencun Upgrade, drastically reducing fees for Ethereum layer-2 networks. The project had enjoyed some early successes, reaching a market capitalization exceeding $100 million before this incident.