We're excited to announce that social slashing is now active on Ethos! This powerful new feature allows active Ethos users to initiate a slash against other Ethos users or even accounts on X. But proceed carefully—there's an important twist: initiating a slash requires risking your own credibility.

How Social Slashing Works

When proposing a slash, you put a bond of your own credibility score at stake. For the slash to succeed, more than 60% of participating Ethos users must agree. If the slash passes, the target loses a significant portion of their credibility score. However, if less than 40% agree, you lose your staked credibility instead. This mechanism ensures accountability and careful consideration before proposing a slash.

Only users who are categorized as "Reputable" can propose slashes. Each slash is active for 48 hours and prominently featured at the top of the Ethos feed, allowing the community ample time to vote, comment, and discuss the merits of the slash. All interactions—including comments, votes, and slash outcomes—are transparently recorded on-chain.

Rules and Limits of Social Slashing

To maintain the integrity and quality of the Ethos experience, we've implemented a few important guidelines:

- At most, three active slashes can exist simultaneously.
- Each user can only have one active slash proposal at a time.
- You can't slash a user who has already been slashed within the past 10 days.
- You can't retaliate by slashing someone who recently slashed you within the past 10 days.

During the first hour after initiating a slash, you have the flexibility to edit your comment or cancel the slash entirely. Additionally, voting on slashes isn't equal—votes are weighted according to reputation: Neutral users carry 1 point, Reputable users 2 points, and Exemplary users 3 points. To ensure meaningful participation, at least 1% of all Ethos users must vote for the slash outcome to be valid.

Beta Phase and Platform Safeguards

This feature launches with a "BETA" tag, indicating that we're closely monitoring the mechanism's effectiveness. The Ethos team reserves the right to reverse or modify slash outcomes if they inadvertently undermine the platform's integrity. Once we've gathered enough feedback and data to have full confidence, the beta tag will be removed.

Future Enhancements: Financial Slashing and Incentives

Looking ahead, Ethos plans to introduce financial slashing, adding another layer of security to our network. Financial slashing will potentially affect your vouch balances—essentially placing your vouched credibility at financial risk. Rest assured, ample notice and detailed guidance will be provided before launching this next phase.

Currently, there's no direct incentive for successfully initiating or participating in slashes, but incentives are on our roadmap. We're committed to thoughtfully rolling out these enhancements to further secure and enrich the Ethos community.

Learn More

For more details, you can view the complete documentation on social slashing [here](https://help.ethos.network/en/articles/9765931-how-does-slashing-work-on-ethos).

With the introduction of social slashing, we're taking a significant step toward securing and strengthening the social layer through Ethos's evolving protocol.