Following a cyber attack, Normie meme coin crashed 99.99%

A flash loan attack against meme Cryptocurrency “Normie” crashed market value from $40 million to less than $200k.

A flash loan attack in the Defi crypto sector is when someone borrows a large amount of cryptocurrency without any collateral (security deposit), uses it to manipulate prices or exploit weaknesses in a system, and then repays the loan in the same transaction, often making a profit. This all happens very quickly, often within seconds, taking advantage of the instant nature of blockchain transactions.

On 26 May 2024, An unknown hacker conducted a flash loan attack against Normie’s meme token. Reportedly the attacker used a loophole in the contract’s tax mechanism to conduct a flash loan attack.

With the help of the attack, the attacker increased the supply of the token rapidly which led to the downfall in the trade price of the Normie token by more than 99% within a couple of hours.

Because of this attack, the market value of the crypto token crashed to less than $200k from $40 million.

Just an hour ago, from the time of writing this article, the Normie meme crypto project team said that the hacker contacted & agreed to return 90% of the funds he collected through this attack.

The project team will use the returned funds to relaunch the project.

Also, the meme project team requested all the affected Normie meme token buyers to register for a snapshot to get compensation.

Meme crypto tokens & auditing challenges

Checking the code for token smart contract errors is very important in cryptocurrencies but often ignored in meme coins. Many teams don’t want to spend the money needed to find and fix these errors, which can lead to big losses. This is a big issue with meme coins because they spread quickly. New meme coins appear every day, and many just copy code from other projects, making them more vulnerable to problems.

Read also: American senator aims to provide a right to all Americans to hold Bitcoin in self-custody