Project Overview
ChainCatcher reports that Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, has released a yellow paper for a new project called FLOP on social media. FLOP is defined as a "Proof of Useful Inference" (PoUI) blockchain and its native currency, designed for the agent economy. AI agents can use FLOP tokens to pay miners for inference computation costs.
Network Architecture
FLOP adopts a hybrid architecture combining PoUI with an account-based chain. Agents submit session requests to the mempool containing model weight hashes, maximum latency, computation volume, confidentiality flags, and fees. Miners perform the inference and return proofs, while validators incorporate the proof hashes into blocks to complete settlement.
Economic Model
The FLOP genesis supply is approximately 2.48346 billion tokens, all allocated via airdrop with no venture capital premine or auction. The initial reward distribution splits 75% to miners, 10% to validators, 10% to agents, and 5% to regular stakers. The network averages a block time of 1 second, with a roadmap target of sub-second block production. The initial block reward is 96 FLOP, halving every 730 days for a total of five halvings, after which it permanently stays at 3 FLOP. The validator set is capped at 1,000, with approximately 50 validators rotated monthly based on verified work and uptime. Miners and validators must stake FLOP, and malicious behavior may result in full slashing and permanent exclusion. Governance is conducted through FLOP Improvement Proposals, requiring a two-thirds majority of active validators for approval in most cases.