Normie Coin, a popular meme coin on BASE, has suffered a major exploit that has caused a staggering loss in value. The price has tumbled by 99%, leaving its community rattled.
The exploit, discovered and discussed on X by Profound Watcher, highlighted vulnerabilities to the token’s smart contract.
Normie Coin Exploited
The attack led to the meme coin’s value falling off a cliff, losing 99.80% of its value. The suddenness of the drop in value has raised eyebrows in some corners of the market. According to the available information, the exploiters used a flash loan attack to manipulate the token pool, allowing them to borrow a large sum of crypto without providing any collateral, provided the loan is repaid within the same transaction. These types of loans are used for arbitrage opportunities but are, more often than not, used for malicious purposes. In the case of the Normie token, the market cap of the token plummeted from $40 million to $200,000. The hack was also picked up by WuBlockchain, who stated on X,
“Memecoin Normie was attacked, causing its price to drop by over 99% in a minute, reducing its market value from 40 million dollars to below 200 thousand dollars. The supply of Normie was significantly increased, and the attacker used a loophole in the contract’s tax mechanism to execute a flash loan attack.”
Details Of The Hack
The attacker first bought 5 million NORMIE tokens, enabling them to access the permissions needed for the exploit. This is because purchasing a specific amount of tokens allows the purchaser, in this case, the attacker, to access a set of permissions reserved for pre-market users. After this, the attacker initiated a flash loan attack, continually filling the contract address with tokens and draining liquidity. This left the pool at zero value, allowing the attacker to buy the tokens at no cost and sell them to others who were buying the dip.
Following the exploit, the meme coin registered a sharp decline in value, with the token’s market capitalization also witnessing a staggering drop.
The Risks Of Meme Coins
Meme coins and their teams often neglect a critical aspect: code auditing. Meme coin developers are often unwilling to spend the funds on auditing and often fail to detect smart contract vulnerabilities, leading to millions of dollars in losses in the event of an exploit. New meme coins that enter the market often use smart contracts adapted from other projects. This means developers usually don’t have the technical know-how when it comes to these contracts.
Investors must remain cautious of these risks and understand that such risks can occur with meme coins. Developers and meme coin teams must ensure the audit of smart contracts to reduce the risks from such exploits.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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