Shiba Inu has taken its long-promised SOU (Shib Owes You) recovery framework from concept to production. The project has opened on-chain claims for users affected by the September 2025 Shibarium bridge exploit. Each approved claim is minted as a transferable NFT on Ethereum, giving victims a verifiable, tradable record of what the ecosystem owes them.
The official Shiba Inu account confirmed the launch via X. “SOU is live. Introducing SOU (Shib Owes You) an onchain NFT built as a good-faith effort to support impacted users with payouts, donations, and occasional rewards. Transparent. Tradable. On-chain.” The announcement stated.
At the time of writing Shiba Inu trades at $0.000006532, down 0.39% over the last 24 hours. The meme coin has gained 8.79% in the past week.
How the SOU Mechanism Works
The SOU system centers on two core balances. The “Original Principal” is an immutable, on-chain record of the exact amount a user lost. The “Current Principal” is dynamic. It decreases as payouts are processed or community donations flow into the pool. This dual-balance structure keeps the historical debt visible even as repayments chip away at what is currently owed.
Shib’s documentation draws a clear line between two types of distributions. A “Payout” reduces the Current Principal, it is direct compensation against the debt. A “Reward” adds value without touching the principal balance. It functions as a bonus on top of recovery. This distinction prevents the project from inflating perceived repayment through non-debt distributions.
Funding enters a shared pool drawn from ecosystem revenues and community donations. Once deposits arrive, the system applies them proportionally across all active claims. Optional creator fees on secondary-market NFT trades are routed back into payouts or rewards, creating an additional funding channel tied to market activity. A real-time activity feed makes every incoming donation and outgoing payout visible to the public the moment it occurs.
SOU NFTs as Tradable Financial Instruments
SOU claims are not static receipts. Each NFT can be merged with others to consolidate positions, split into smaller units, transferred to a different wallet, or sold outright on secondary marketplaces. This design turns claims into liquid financial instruments rather than locked entitlements.
The secondary-market option matters most for users unwilling to wait for the full recovery timeline. A holder can sell a discounted SOU claim to a buyer willing to bet on the ecosystem’s long-term repayment capacity. That buyer then acquires rights to future payouts at the negotiated price set by the market. This dynamic introduces real-time price discovery around the depth of the recovery deficit.
Source: https://coinpaper.com/14682/shiba-inu-sou-goes-live-shibarium-exploit-victims-can-now-claim-nft-compensation
