FLOP Network Publishes Technical Paper Detailing Proof‑of‑Useful‑Inference Tokenomics

Arthur Hayes, co‑founder of BitMEX, has published a technical paper for the FLOP Network, a blockchain designed to let autonomous AI agents pay miners directly for inference work. The paper details the token’s supply, distribution, consensus mechanism and governance model.

Token supply and distribution

The genesis supply is set at approximately 2.483 billion FLOP tokens. All initial tokens are slated for airdrop distribution; there is no venture‑capital premine, token auction, or presale. Block rewards start at 96 FLOP per block and are allocated as follows:

• Miners: 75 %
• Validators: 10 %
• AI agents: 10 %
• Regular stakers: 5 %

Rewards halve every 730 days, moving from 96 to 48, 24, 12, 6 and finally a permanent subsidy of 3 FLOP after the fifth halving.

Proof‑of‑Useful‑Inference consensus

FLOP uses a consensus model called Proof‑of‑Useful‑Inference (PoUI). An AI agent submits a session request to the mempool, specifying model hash, latency, compute requirement (in FLOPs), confidentiality setting and fee. Miners with suitable hardware accept the request, perform the inference, and return a proof of work. Validators then embed the proof hash into a block, settling the transaction and distributing the session fee plus the miner’s share of block rewards.

Validator and staking mechanics

Validators must stake FLOP and are subject to slashing for publishing dishonest blocks. The validator set is capped at 1,000, with roughly 50 rotating each month based on workload and uptime. Token holders can delegate their FLOP to miners or validators to earn a proportional share of rewards. Governance changes are proposed via FLOP Improvement Proposals (FIPs) and require a two‑thirds majority of the active validator set.

Roadmap and timeline

The project targets a large airdrop in Q4 2026 and a genesis block in Q1 2027. The technical specifications are labeled as a draft and were last updated on August 27, with further development expected before launch.