Ethos has introduced $WHUF, also called Whuffie, and plans to sell 20% of its supply in an auction on September 1. Ethos announced the sale on August 20, 2026, and explained how it works in a series of posts through August 26.
The sale is built around Ethos itself: a price guarantee tied to vouching, bonuses for existing contributors and referrers, and bids that are public and linked to Ethos profiles. Here is what was announced, in order.
The announcement: auction terms
On August 20, Ethos posted the headline terms of the $WHUF sale:
- Auction on September 1 for 20% of supply
- 85% price guarantee
- $1 million starting FDV (fully diluted valuation), with a $99 million cap
- Bonuses for Contributor XP and referrals
Registration is open at sale.ethos.network. Ethos also published supporting documents:
The 85% price guarantee
On August 21, Ethos explained the price guarantee. According to Ethos, it serves two purposes:
- It gets the token into use, “securing” the social infrastructure of Ethos.
- It protects your downside for a full year.
The steps are short. Buy in the auction, then vouch your tokens within 30 days of TGE (the token generation event). That’s all it takes to be covered. At any point in the following 12 months, you can redeem, and the Foundation pays you 85% of what you paid, in USDC.
Referral bonuses
On August 24, Ethos described the referral program. A bid of $100 gets you a referral link. Every credible bidder you bring in earns you up to 10% of their purchase, paid in $WHUF.
The flow:
- Register
- Place your bid
- Share your link
When the auction settles, bonuses are calculated on what your referrals actually bought. Your bonus $WHUF arrives at TGE alongside your sale tokens. There is nothing to claim and no forms to fill out.
Vouch stats frozen on August 24
Many Ethos users have ETH locked in vouches for friends, and freeing it up to bid means unvouching. Ethos called this the hardest part of the auction, so it froze everyone’s vouch stats on August 24.
Normally, unvouching is permanent: duration, mutual vouches and score impact all end with the vouch. Ethos said that isn’t changing. What’s new is the snapshot. Stats as of August 24 are saved, so unvouching for the auction no longer has to cost them. In Ethos’s words: unvouch, bid, re-vouch in $WHUF, and keep it all.
No airdrop, and a fixed XP bonus pool
On August 26, Ethos explained why there is no airdrop. Instead, contributors are rewarded with bonuses for putting skin in the game on the protocol’s future success.
The XP bonus is a fixed pool of 100,000 $WHUF, split among contributors who bid in the auction. As Ethos pointed out, that means fewer participants leaves more for each one, so technically every person you talk out of the sale is more $WHUF for you. The referral bonus exists to pay you up to 10% for doing the opposite.
Public bids with names attached
Also on August 26, Ethos said the sale will bring social trading to its token sale. Every $WHUF bid will be public and connected to an Ethos profile, so you can see who’s in, and at what size, before placing your own bid.
During the sale there will be a live leaderboard showing every bid, every bidder and the price each one set. While you bid, you’ll also see people from your own network who are already in. Ethos summed it up as “not a black box with a progress bar. an order book with faces.”
This story first appeared on X.
