Normie, a meme token on the BASE blockchain, saw its value crash. Meanwhile, a couple of meme coins riding on Ex-President Donald Trump’s fame helped the meme sector in terms of gains over the past 24 hours.
The alleged attack caused Normie’s value to plummet by an astonishing 99.80% to just $0.00008013. At the time of writing, the token was struggling to regain its footing and was still 95% below its pre-exploit price, trading at $0.001903.
Normie 24-hour price chart | Source: CoinGecko
The exploit led to Normie’s market value initially collapsing to less than $200,000, a significant fall from its previous high of $40 million. Since then, its market cap has risen slightly to about $1.5 million.
The attacker reportedly identified and exploited a flaw in Normie’s contract, specifically targeting a weakness in its tax mechanism. Using this loophole, they executed a flash loan attack, draining a substantial amount of the token’s value.
On-chain analyst Golden Degen took to X to try and shed light on the Normie exploit, claiming it began when the attacker’s wallet was funded through the Secret Network.
How $NORMIE got exploited and went from $40m MC to $100k MC within 1 minute, who else is effected, and what the @NormieBase team can do to fix this situation:1. The exploiter's wallet was funded by secret network2. The Normie contact had a premarket user map that bypasses… pic.twitter.com/SuTqTlJf4W
— Golden Degen (@0xGoldenDegen) May 26, 2024
The vulnerability lay in the Normie smart contract. The flaw in the premarket user map bypassed checks within the swapAndLiquify function.
This loophole allowed tokens to be minted and sold without restriction. According to Golden Degen, the contract’s verification process only checked if the token balance matched that of the team wallet. If the balances matched, it permitted the minting of tokens.
The exploiter allegedly took advantage of this by manipulating their token balance to match the team wallet’s balance. They then began minting and selling large quantities of tokens on the open market, significantly increasing the total supply and crashing the price.
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Following the attack, the Normie team took to social media to address the situation, assuring holders that the matter would be resolved soon. They also urged people not to buy any Normie tokens being minted by the exploiter.
Soon after, the team reported that the exploiter had contacted them and offered to return 90% of the exploited Ethereum (ETH), keeping 10% as a bug bounty.
In the message, the exploiter also gave a condition for the return of the funds, asking that more than 600 ETH in the dev wallet be used to launch a new token to repay Normie holders fairly.
Source: Basescan.org
The Normie team has since signaled agreement with the exploiter’s demands and is considering a relaunch and airdrop for current Normie holders.
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.Tx: https://t.co/dCXfXfcG7g
— Normie (@NormieBase) May 26, 2024
A key decision now is to determine the snapshot timing for the airdrop—either just before the exploit occurred or at the moment they officially announced that users should not buy anymore Normies.
MAGA hits all-time high
In contrast to Normie’s woes, a couple of meme coins riding on Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s fame led the meme sector in terms of gains over the past 24 hours.
Following Donald Trump’s attendance at the Libertarian National Convention, MAGA (TRUMP) and MAGA VP (MVP) saw their prices skyrocket by 28.9% and 26.1%, respectively, per data from CoinGecko.
TRUMP 24-hour price chart | Source: CoinGecko
At the time of writing, TRUMP was trading at $11.11, although it momentarily hit a new all-time high of $11.81 during that period. The meme coin currently has a market cap of $520 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $15.3 million.
On its part, MVP is currently worth $0.5501 per token, which is still more than 21% below its all-time high price. Still, the coin has made massive gains, registering an impressive 145% increase in its price over the last two weeks.
Doland Tremp
Another Trump-inspired meme coin, Doland Tremp (TREMP), was also among the top five gainers of the day, registering a 24.3% uptick to trade at $1.21.
TREMP has also seen significant growth in tandem, with Donald Trump ramping up his campaigns and making overtures to the crypto community. In the last 30 days, the coin’s value has shot up by 270%.
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