Memecoin Normie negotiates with hacker after millions theft

The team behind the Base memecoin Normie (NORMIE) is in negotiations with the hacker responsible for the theft of a significant amount of money due to a vulnerability in smart contracts. This theft led to a $41.7 million drop in the token’s market cap within three hours.

Hacker’s offer accepted

Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain was one of the first to spot the exploit and the hacker’s offer. This was shared in an on-chain message to Normie’s deployment address on May 26.

According to reports, Normie has accepted the hacker’s offer to get back 90% of the stolen NORMIE tokens. This is despite the fact that the price has already fallen by 96% since the exploit. The hacker’s condition was that Normie would use the stolen money and the $2.3 million in the developer wallet to issue a new token and refund NORMIE holders. The hacker also asked for no retaliation in another on-chain message.

“We will have to relaunch, yes,” Normie’s team said on a new X account they created after their main account was suspended. “That will happen after we get our main Twitter account back and after we receive the money from the hacker,” Normie said at the time. However, shortly afterwards this temporary account was also suspended.

The hacker emphasized his strict conditions and demanded that the relaunch of the tokens take place before the money was returned. “The developer wallet made significantly more than me during this exploit, and I have no other way to ensure this money is used properly,” the hacker stated.

“Dinho”, one of the administrators of the official NORMIE Telegram group, could not confirm when NORMIE token holders will be able to get their stolen funds back. Dinho’s X account was also suspended.

Drop of NORMIE rate

NORMIE’s price started falling at 03:55 UTC on May 26, plummeting more than 92% to $0.0032 within an hour, according to CoinGecko. After two and a half years it dropped to 99.5%. Apart from a short-lived price spike to $0.019, the price remained on a downward move to $0.0016 at the time of writing, marking a 96% decline.

The market cap hit a low of $200,000 after falling from $41.9 million, but has since recovered slightly.

The team behind blockchain scam detector Quick Intel claims that 72,000 NORMIE holders have been affected by the smart contract vulnerability, which was discovered in March. It is not clear how much money was stolen during this ordeal.

NORMIE was launched during a recent memecoin mania on Base in March 2024 and reached a peak market cap of $130 million on April 2, according to CoinGecko. Recent research has found that 91% of Base memecoins have vulnerabilities that could expose users to major losses.