On August 14, 2025, Ethos shared a community proposal for EIP-9 from @publius_val. It would stop people from removing reviews and vouches for an account while that account faced a slash vote. On September 4, 2025, Ethos announced that EIP-9 was live.

The change affects anyone who reviews or vouches for others on Ethos. Pulling support at the last minute no longer protects you from the penalty for backing someone who gets slashed.

The proposal

@publius_val’s proposal was short:

Do not allow removal of reviews/vouches for targets of Slashes, during a slash vote

Ethos called it “a big change to how these penalties work.”

How slash penalties worked before

Ethos explained the rules at the time of the proposal. Users who had reviewed or vouched for someone were penalized only if a slash against that person went through.

That left a gap. During a slash, anyone who had left a review or vouch and feared the slash would be approved could remove their support. Ethos named the penalty they were avoiding the “misplaced endorsement” penalty. Removing the review or vouch before the vote ended was a way around it.

What changed when EIP-9 went live

On September 4, 2025, Ethos announced that EIP-9 was in effect. The misplaced endorsement penalty would now apply whether or not you removed your review or vouch during the slash.

In practice:

• Before EIP-9: removing a review or vouch during a slash avoided the misplaced endorsement penalty.
• After EIP-9: removing it during a slash no longer avoided the penalty.

Ethos summed it up as a reason to be “even MORE thoughtful about WHO you review & vouch for.”

Why Ethos made the change

Ethos said the goal was to make sure people only support those they truly know and trust.

Ethos pointed to a problem it had seen on the network: many “farms” of people reviewing each other without knowing each other. Those reviews looked like endorsements but carried no real knowledge of the person being reviewed. Being able to withdraw them when a slash came made that behavior cheaper.

By keeping the penalty in place regardless of removal, EIP-9 was meant to discourage fraudulent, inauthentic reviews. A review or vouch on Ethos became a commitment you couldn’t back out of once its target faced a slash.

This story first appeared on X.