Normie Dumps 99% as Attacker Calls Meme Coin’s Tax Contract a ‘Copy-Paste’ Job

As a blockchain analyst, I have uncovered that attackers took advantage of a supposed tax function within the token’s contract to generate an excess of 1 billion tokens beyond the intended supply. Subsequently, these unauthorized tokens were exchanged for ether in transactions.

Over the weekend, an intruder made an proposal in a blockchain transmission for Normie’s developers to recover 90% of the misappropriated funds by restarting the project.

As an analyst, I would express it this way: With current ethereum prices, approximately 600 ether is equivalent to around 2.3 million dollars. This represents a significant demand and marked a new trend in cyberattacks against projects – the attacker made it clear they would only return the stolen funds if the project relaunched. By early Monday, the normie developers had accepted the bounty offer, as indicated by messages on the official Telegram group that I reviewed for CoinDesk.

In the early hours of Monday in Asia, an attacker criticized Normie’s contract code as a “rushed job” that may not have undergone extensive review by its creators before deployment.

As a crypto investor, I’ve noticed that the code in this specific token contract is strikingly similar to that of other tokens, some of which were created long before this one, which I’ll refer to as “Normie.” In fact, many meme tokens seem to be carbon copies from the same small pool of contracts. The transfer functions in these contracts often include intricate tax logic that can appear unnecessary and complex to an outside observer.

It sits at a market capitalization of just $700 as of early Monday following the exploit.

As an analyst, I can recount that at least one unsuspecting investor endured a substantial financial blow as a result of this cyberattack. Their initial $1.6 million investment was reduced to a mere $150 in a blink of an eye.

Normie’s X has been suspended as of early Asian hours on Monday.