A memecoin trader has lost over $1 million in a dramatic Normie memecoin exploit. The trader invested $1.16 million to purchase 11.23 million Normie (NORMIE) tokens, only to see the investment plummet by over 99%, leaving a value of just $150. This substantial loss was reported on May 26 by Lookonchain.
Normie, a Base-native memecoin, fell victim to a smart contract exploit that drained over $41.7 million from its market cap within three hours. Lookonchain was the first to alert the community to the exploit. The memecoin’s value dropped by more than 96%, with its market cap sinking to around $200,000 before a slight recovery, as per CoinGecko data.
On May 27, the Normie development team agreed to the hacker’s offer to return 90% of the stolen tokens. This deal requires Normie to use the returned assets, along with $2.3 million from their development wallet, to launch a new token to compensate affected holders. The hacker insisted that the new token launch must precede the return of the stolen funds, as indicated in a blockchain message captured by Lookonchain.
“The dev wallet made significantly more than I did during this exploit, and I have no other way to ensure that those funds are used appropriately,” the hacker stated.
Following the hacker’s proposal, a surge of fake Normie posts appeared on X (formerly Twitter), falsely claiming the launch of a new token. These posts aimed to mislead users into clicking on fraudulent links.
The exploit has impacted over 72,000 Normie holders, with the issue first detected in March, according to Quick Intel, an on-chain analytics firm.
Despite this incident, the memecoin market remains active. Frog-themed memecoin Pepe reached a new all-time high of $0.00001718 on May 27, driven by a 75% increase over the past week, as reported by CoinMarketCap. Some traders continue to make substantial profits in this volatile sector, exemplified by a recent success story where a Pepe trader turned $3,000 into $46 million, achieving a 15,718-fold return on investment.
Memecoin trading remains a high-risk, high-reward market, where fortunes can be made or lost in the blink of an eye.