Arthur Hayes Says Flop Labs Will Build a Decentralized Compute Network, with Testnet Participants Set to Receive About 20% of Supply

Arthur Hayes used a post titled The Book of Genesis to lay out the core idea and token design behind Flop Labs, his AI and crypto project. He said the current AI market lacks a unified pricing standard for compute, with different models defining and pricing a “token” in different ways. On that basis, Hayes proposed Flop Network, a decentralized compute network with FLOP as its native token. According to Hayes, FLOP would represent a direct claim on compute, or FLOPs, allowing AI agents and humans to trade using a single global unit price for computing power. He said the tokenomics are designed as a fair launch: the team is self-funded and there is no presale. Miners would earn FLOP block rewards and inference fees by providing “Proof of Useful Inference” (PoUI). AI agents would use $FLOP to buy compute, which Hayes described as “food,” and combine it with decentralized storage to obtain persistent memory, or “personality.” Hayes also said testnet participants will receive about 20% of the token supply, distributed over 10 years. If the AI-agent economy develops as he predicts, he said Flop Network could become more valuable than Bitcoin. Earlier, Hayes said he was returning to lead Flop Labs and launch the AI agent token FLOP.