Ethos

Ethos operates a credibility and reputation protocol for crypto participants, recording reputation signals onchain. Users leave thumbs-up, neutral or thumbs-down reviews, stake value in others through "vouching," and can propose "slashes" against participants judged to have acted in bad faith, with slashing decided by validator voting and backed by bonds. These peer-to-peer signals combine into a single numeric Ethos Credibility Score that draws on inputs such as wallet age, amounts vouched in and by a user, positive and negative reviews, attestations of external social accounts, who invited the user, slashes received, credible vouchers, follower counts and sybil likelihood.

The company frames the score as an analogue to a credit report, but built on open protocols and onchain records, and describes its consensus approach as "social Proof of Stake." Additional mechanisms in the whitepaper include invitation-based onboarding (with credibility bonds between inviter and invitee to deter sybil accounts), attestations linking social profiles such as X, Discord, Farcaster and Telegram to an Ethos profile, reputation markets, an XP system, and human verification. The whitepaper describes $WHUF as the protocol's native token, with a fixed supply of 10,000,000, no minting function, and protocol fees burned; vouching, fees, markets, bonds and rewards are said to run through it.

Ethos positions itself as a platform rather than a single application: the Credibility Score is described as the first dApp on the Ethos Network, with onchain smart contracts that any interface can write reviews, vouches and slashes to, plus a REST API, OpenAPI specification, API keys via SIWE signatures, "Log in with Ethos," and an "Ethos Everywhere Wallet" that lets partner applications offer reviewing, voting and replying without wallet pop-ups, including gas sponsorship for qualified users based on credibility score.