skip to Main Content
bitcoin
Bitcoin (BTC) $ 75,799.31 0.69%
vested-xor
Vested XOR (VXOR) $ 3,405.08 99,999.99%
ethereum
Ethereum (ETH) $ 2,897.00 1.57%
tether
Tether (USDT) $ 1.00 0.02%
solana
Solana (SOL) $ 196.63 2.99%
bnb
BNB (BNB) $ 595.56 1.87%
usd-coin
USDC (USDC) $ 1.00 0.00%
xrp
XRP (XRP) $ 0.550041 0.49%
staked-ether
Lido Staked Ether (STETH) $ 2,895.27 1.24%
dogecoin
Dogecoin (DOGE) $ 0.192217 3.39%

Normie Dumps 99% as Attacker Calls Meme Coin’s Tax Contract a ‘Copy-Paste’ Job

Hyped Base meme coin normie (NORMIE) plunged 99% on Sunday after being hit by an exploit that saw attackers manipulate the token’s total supply, completely draining its liquidity pools.

Blockchain sleuths said attackers exploited a so-called tax function in the token’s contract to issue more tokens than the intended 1 billion supply. The extra tokens were then traded for ether.

NORMIE prices plunged 99% after an exploit targeting a tax function in its code. (DEXTools)
NORMIE prices plunged 99% after an exploit targeting a tax function in its code. (DEXTools)

In an on-chain message late on Sunday, the attacker offered Normie developers a way to receive 90% of the stolen funds back if they agreed to relaunch the project.

“I offer to return 90% of the exploited ETH, keeping 10% as a bug bounty (with no reprisals,” the on-chain message reads. “One condition: it, and the 600 ETH in the dev wallet, are used to fairly launch a new token that is used to reimburse NORMIE holders.”

Six hundred ether is worth nearly $2.3 million at current prices. The move marked one of the first instances of an attacker keeping a project relaunch as a condition to return funds. Normie developers accepted the bounty offer as of early Monday, messages on the project’s official Telegram group viewed by CoinDesk showed.

In another on-chain message in Asian morning hours on Monday, the attacker called Normie’s contract code a “copy-paste” job which was likely not thoroughly reviewed by its developers prior to being pushed live.

“This exact code is present in a number of other token contracts, a few of which significantly pre-date Normie. Most meme tokens are simply copy-paste jobs from the same small set of contracts, all with over-complicated tax logic in the transfer function,” the attacker said.

“I suspect this simply a case of them re-using code they didn’t thoroughly review,” they added. Before the dump, NORMIE was among the top meme coins on Base with a market capitalization of over $40 million and nearly 90,000 on-chain token holders, as per DEXTools metrics. Normie is slang for a “normal person,” and the Base version was modeled after a blue coloured frog that resembled the popular Pepe the Frog character.

It sits at a market capitalization of just $700 as of early Monday following the exploit.

Meanwhile, at least one NORMIE investor faced a massive loss due to the attack, with their $1.6 million in investment turning to just $150 in seconds.

“Since $NORMIE was exploited, the 11.23M $NORMIE that this trader spent $1.16M to buy is now worth less than $150,” analysis firm Lookonchain posted on X. “He spent $1.16M to buy 11.23M $NORMIE at $0.1035 from Mar 25 to Apr 9 and has held it until now without selling it.”

Normie’s X has been suspended as of early Asian hours on Monday.

Loading data ...
Comparison
View chart compare
View table compare
Back To Top