Flop whitepaper draft: 10 numbers that define the network

Flop Network's whitepaper is dated September 25, 2026 and marked "Draft for review". It sends readers to the Yellow Paper as the definitive specification, which is also unfinished. With the testnet coming, here are the ten numbers that define the design.

1. One-second blocks

Blocks are produced about once per second, with finality from AlephBFT. The whitepaper says throughput figures won't be published until they've been measured under a disclosed workload. Getting below one second is listed as a foundation goal.

2. A 96 FLOP block reward

It halves every 730 days for five halvings (96, 48, 24, 12, 6, 3), then stays at 3 FLOP per block permanently. The intro page gives the schedule.

3. A 75 / 10 / 10 / 5 split

Block rewards go 75% to miners, 10% to validators, 10% to agents and brokers (as a usage subsidy) and 5% to stakers.

4. An 85 / 15 fee split

Inference fees go 85% to the serving miner and 15% to validators. The protocol takes no platform fee, and no FLOP is burned.

5. 1,000 validators

The set is capped at 1,000. Finality runs on a 100-validator committee that is reshuffled every hour, and the bottom 50 validators are rotated out about every 30 days. More in our validator guide.

6. A 1.2M FLOP validator bond

Each validator self-stakes 1,200,000 FLOP and unbonding takes about 21 days. Each genesis seat in the airdrop is sized to match.

7. 16 GB of VRAM

That's the minimum per GPU for miners. Clusters of 8 to 16 units serve larger models. See how to mine FLOP.

8. A 4.4bn genesis allocation

That's 24.3% of year-10 supply: 1.2bn each for miners, agents and validators, and an 800M ecosystem reserve. The whitepaper's glossary calls the airdrop portion "up to 3.6bn". See the airdrop guide.

9. 8 FLOP per block for each entity

Flop Labs and the Flop Foundation each mint 8 FLOP per block on top of the reward, halving on the same schedule and ending after year ten. Together that's 2.0bn FLOP, or 10.8% of year-10 supply.

10. Two-thirds to change the rules

Protocol upgrades (FIPs) need approval from two-thirds of the active validator set, plus a 14-day enactment delay. Until the first halving, only the Foundation can submit proposals.

What's still open

The whitepaper lists open items itself. The capacity-scaled miner stake is "still being finalised". The agent-memory fee schedule is unpublished. The point-lock settlement path is unaudited. The multisig superuser key handover is specified but hasn't been carried out. Flop Labs points questions to the Yellow Paper. We'll update this article as it is finalised.