Run a FLOP inference broker or OpenAI-compatible endpoint

Most buyers of AI inference pay in dollars and won't hold a crypto token. Flop's design puts a broker between them and the network. The whitepaper defines a broker as "a dollar-facing counterparty that sells network compute to non-crypto buyers, fronting $FLOP to miners." This use case is for a business or developer that wants to be that counterparty, or to run a simpler endpoint that lets agents try FLOP compute.

Status, November 10, 2026: Flop Labs is still building the reference broker, and its demand FAQ says "brokers and the dollar rails only go live with the chain." The testnet is not live. See the compute use cases hub.

What a broker does

The demand FAQ says the broker solves two mismatches. Currency: "buyers pay fiat or stablecoin while miners must receive $FLOP." Timing: "aggregators settle with suppliers monthly, while FLOP miners are paid every block." The broker buys FLOP on the secondary market, pays miners per block and waits to be paid by its customers. "That is the risk it is compensated for."

Flop describes the buyers it expects as "OpenRouter, OpenClaw, Hermes and similar." Users on those platforms would "enter a FLOP or broker API key and pay in fiat or stablecoin," and never touch FLOP themselves.

How a broker earns

• The broker share of block rewards. 10% of each block reward goes to agents and brokers. Flop's tokenomics summary says it is minted to a protocol account with "distribution not yet live," and "the rules that will govern them are still being designed."
• Margin or discount. The demand FAQ says brokers "price freely: keep it as margin or pass it through as discount," and that the subsidy "supports headline discounts of 50% or more in the early months, settling toward about 10% long-run" at base-case token prices. That is Flop's projection, not a guarantee.
• No protocol rake. The competitive FAQ says FLOP settles "with 0% platform take," and the demand FAQ says "the only on-chain cost is gas and publication."

The simpler version: an endpoint for testnet agents

You don't need fiat rails to start. Flop's technology FAQ says "a third-party broker or gateway needs no permission and no agreement with FLOP," and that "an OpenAI-compatible endpoint in front of FLOP sessions, funded with testnet $FLOP so that agents can try the network, is exactly the broker shape the network is designed around and is welcome." The interface to build against is "the session and settlement specification in the public yellow paper," plus the HTLC reference library and MCP server. The Yellow Paper is on GitHub, and our Yellow Paper guide summarises it.

What running a real broker involves

The demand FAQ lists the operational requirements: demand forecasting out to 30 days, priority handling for enterprise and aggregator traffic ("OpenRouter enforces roughly 95% uptime"), treasury to cover the first monthly settlement gap, a third-party fiat on-ramp, and fixed-dollar pricing for non-crypto users. It adds that "brokers never store or access inference content."

There are legal duties too. "Once fiat flows, a broker must KYC its counterparties; jurisdictional and export-control restrictions on compute sales require legal review." The whitepaper says brokers handling fiat "will be subject to their own licensing and customer-identification obligations." Get advice where you operate.

Flop Labs says it will publish its reference broker "as an open-source playbook with its economics and P&L, so that five to ten independent operators can run it," after testing it on testnet. Who runs the first live broker "has not been finalised."

Does running a broker earn the airdrop?

There's no broker airdrop pool. The draft airdrop page has pools for miners, validators and agents, plus an 800,000,000 FLOP ecosystem reserve. The whitepaper says "connectors that route demand into the network may be recognised separately through discretionary allocations from the ecosystem reserve, announced before the snapshot." Flop's technology FAQ also says "There is no grants programme and no token allocation for builders." Treat any broker reward as unannounced.

Self-dealing doesn't help. The demand FAQ says a broker that routes demand to its own miners "earns it nothing extra" and pays "15% of every fee it pays itself" to validators. The testnet page says spend sent to miners you control isn't credited for agents either. See the airdrop guide and agent payments.

FAQ

What is a broker on Flop Network?

A dollar-facing counterparty that sells FLOP compute to buyers who don't hold FLOP. It quotes in dollars, buys FLOP on the market, pays miners per block and bills its customers on their own terms. Brokers share a 10% slice of block rewards with agents, which is not distributed yet.

Do I need permission to build a FLOP gateway?

No. Flop's technology FAQ says a third-party broker or gateway needs no permission and no agreement with Flop, and that an OpenAI-compatible endpoint funded with testnet FLOP is welcome.

Can a broker earn the FLOP airdrop?

There's no broker pool in the draft airdrop terms. The whitepaper says connectors that route demand may get discretionary allocations from the ecosystem reserve, with terms announced before the snapshot. Nothing has been announced yet.