BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has detailed plans for Flop Network, a computing project designed to support artificial intelligence agents. The proposal was shared in an August 19 Substack post.
According to the proposal, roughly 20% of the total FLOP token supply would be distributed to testnet participants over a 10-year period. However, Hayes did not disclose the total token supply or the release schedule for the testnet rewards.
The network aims to connect AI agents requiring computing power with miners operating internet-connected hardware. FLOP would serve as the primary token for payments and rewards within the ecosystem.
Pricing Computing Work via Floating-Point Operations
Flop Network intends to price AI computing tasks using floating-point operations, or FLOPs. This approach contrasts with current industry practices where individual AI providers bill customers using model-specific input and output tokens.
Hayes argued that a standardized FLOP-based pricing model would allow buyers to directly compare compute costs across different services, regardless of the underlying model, hardware, or location. Under the design, any user with an internet-connected computer could act as a compute provider by fulfilling submitted jobs.
Mining Rewards and Remaining Questions
The network would operate under a system termed Proof of Useful Inference. Miners would earn income through a combination of FLOP block rewards and fees collected for processing specific inference requests.
Despite the outlined framework, several key details remain unreleased. The project has not published a white paper, security audit, or token contract, and the specific blockchain supporting the token has not been named. Additionally, the proposal did not detail how validators would verify miner output or confirm that the correct models were used.
Hayes stated that he personally funded the development team, eliminating the need for an early investor presale and preventing retail buyers from holding an imbalanced supply at launch.
Timeline and Market Context
The project roadmap schedules a FLOP airdrop for the fourth quarter of 2026, followed by the Flop Network genesis block in the first quarter of 2027.
Flop Network enters a market where stablecoins currently facilitate agent payments. A Keyrock report from May indicated that AI agents settled $73 million in stablecoin transactions over a 12-month period, with USDC accounting for 98.6% of that volume. Furthermore, Coinbase introduced an x402 standard in July enabling business customers to accept agent payments in USDC. Hayes noted that FLOP differentiates itself by tying its value directly to computing supply rather than the U.S. dollar.
Hayes announced that his next article will address why he believes the AI agent economy requires a spot market priced by floating-point operations.
