Another day Another scam in the crypto verse. A flash loan attack against the meme cryptocurrency “Normie” caused its market value to crash from $40 Million to less than $200k.
The on-chain analytics firm Lookonchain was the first to find the exploit and hackers also offered a deal to return 90% of the tokens in an on-chain message to Normie’s deployer address on May 26.
Since $NORMIE was exploited, the 11.23M $NORMIE that this trader spent $1.16M to buy is now worth less than $150.
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 26, 2024
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.https://t.co/za6YaldkoZ pic.twitter.com/6lJRJsU2mq
The attack involved manipulating the token supply and exploiting a loophole in the contract’s tax mechanism. Normie reportedly agreed to the hacker’s offer to return 90% of the stolen NORMIE tokens, despite a 96% drop in their value due to the exploit.
The condition is that Normie uses the stolen funds and the $2.3 Million in the team’s dev wallet to launch a new token to compensate NORMIE holders. The hacker also requested no reprisals in an on-chain message.
Normie’s team indicated that they would relaunch after recovering their main X account and the funds from the exploiter. However, the hacker insisted that the token re-launch must happen before the funds are returned. Now the project team plans to use the returned funds to relaunch the project and compensate affected token buyers.
Decoding the Attack
According to reports, the attackers utilize the flash loan attack to control the token pool, enabling them to borrow a significant amount of cryptocurrency without offering any collateral, as long as the loan is repaid within the same transaction.
These loans are typically utilized for arbitrage opportunities but are frequently exploited for malicious intents.
The attack highlighted the risks associated with meme coins, particularly the lack of code auditing and smart contract vulnerabilities, which can lead to substantial financial losses.
Meme coin investors generally don’t do a lot of research and analysis and go for the hype which was at last exploited by these hackers.
Normie Trader Losses $1 Million
A trader reportedly lost over $1.1 Million in a flash loan exploit of the meme coin NORMIE, causing its value to plummet by more than 99% in a single day. The market cap of NORMIE dropped from $182 Million to $110,000 within minutes. The trader invested $1.16 Million to acquire 11.23 million NORMIE tokens at a rate of $0.1035 each, but the holdings are now valued at less than $150 after the exploit.
