The Normie memecoin team is considering the hacker's demands after the token's value plummeted by 99%.

The team behind the Base memecoin Normie (NORMIE) is negotiating with a hacker to recover 90% of the stolen funds after a smart contract vulnerability caused the token's market cap to plummet by $41.7 million in under three hours.

Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain first identified the exploit and the hacker's offer in an on-chain message to Normie’s deployer address on May 26.

Normie has reportedly agreed to the hacker's proposal to return 90% of the stolen NORMIE tokens, despite the token's price dropping 96% since the exploit. The agreement stipulates that Normie will use the recovered funds and $2.3 million from the team's development wallet to launch a new token to compensate NORMIE holders. The hacker also requested no reprisals in another on-chain message.

“We will have to re-launch, yes,” Normie’s team stated on a new X account created after their main one was suspended. The relaunch is contingent upon regaining access to their main Twitter account and recovering the funds from the hacker. However, this temporary account was also suspended shortly after.

The hacker insisted that the token relaunch must occur before the funds are returned, citing concerns over the proper use of the recovered funds. 

“Dinho,” an administrator of the official NORMIE Telegram group, could not confirm when NORMIE token holders might recover their stolen funds. Dinho’s X account was also suspended.

NORMIE’s price began to decline at 3:55 am UTC on May 26, falling over 92% to $0.0032 within an hour, and further dropping 99.5% within two and a half hours. Despite a brief spike to $0.019, the price continued to decrease to $0.0016 at the time of writing, marking a 96% drop.

The market cap bottomed out at $200,000 from $41.9 million but has since slightly recovered.

Quick Intel, a blockchain scam detection tool, claims 72,000 NORMIE holders were affected by the smart contract vulnerability discovered in March.

NORMIE was launched during a recent memecoin craze on Base in March 2024, reaching a peak market cap of $130 million on April 2. A recent Cointelegraph investigation found that 91% of Base memecoins have vulnerabilities that could lead to significant losses for users.

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