FLOP miner setup: what Flop's official GPU guide says

People searching "flop miner" and "flop gpu" mostly want to know how setup works. Flop has published two official guides for it: a technical miner guide (updated November 12, 2026) and a plain-language page called Put your GPU to work on FLOP. This page summarises them.

Everything in those guides is for the devnet, which earns nothing. The public testnet is not live yet. Flop's timeline FAQ, updated November 14, targets November 24, 2026, "subject to readiness" (status, what happens on launch day). The timeline FAQ says its miner manual, a Markdown file written for your own AI agent to follow, is not published yet. Expect details below to change before then.

Can I set up a FLOP miner today?

Yes, on the devnet. Flop's miner manual, updated November 12, says "from 2 November 2026 no invitation is needed". The sponsor approves a new devnet miner automatically while at most 100 automatically sponsored miners are still uncalibrated, and a public release pack supplies the scripts, images and endpoints. Our step-by-step devnet miner guide follows that manual. Paid sessions are not open yet. The operator hub still says public operator enrollment is unavailable until the network identity and release are verified. Planning to use your own gaming PC? Read mining FLOP on a home GPU first.

The miner guide's availability note says this is "devnet development only" and that it "does not promise mainnet participation or earnings". If you want to take part, the realistic plan is to prepare a host now and join when the testnet opens. Our testnet joining guide covers that.

What does a FLOP miner run?

Two Docker programs on one NVIDIA GPU machine:

Program	What it does
Model server (miner-vllm-toploc backend)	Runs the AI model on the GPU
Worker (miner-worker)	Signs chain operations, handles paid sessions, publishes TOPLOC proof evidence and renews calibration. It needs no GPU

The default tier is called SOFT and needs no confidential-computing hardware. The guide notes that SOFT's full settlement and dispute path is still open (issue #650) and that the stricter HARD tier is specified but not deployable. Owning or renting the GPU and running the miner count as one role: whoever operates the host owns the miner account and handles registration. Renting out GPU capacity alone doesn't make you a miner.

What hardware do I need?

An NVIDIA GPU server you own, or a rented virtual machine with a GPU, where you can run Docker with GPU access. Container-only rentals that don't allow Docker inside won't work.

Flop's validated test used an NVIDIA A40 running Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct in BF16, with both programs on one host, and 60 GB of disk for that model. Other NVIDIA cards may work if they fit the model, but each needs its own throughput and TOPLOC check. Calibration counts every GPU on a host together, and faster hosts need a larger capacity stake.

For the testnet, the draft testnet page recommends 16 GB or more of VRAM per GPU. Our mining guide lists which cards meet that, and the profitability guide covers rental costs.

Can I mine FLOP on a rented GPU?

Yes, with limits. GPU.ai virtual machines are the documented option, though the guide says it hasn't verified whether each GPU.ai VM comes with Docker and the NVIDIA runtime preinstalled.

A RunPod GPU Pod can run the model server only, because a Pod is itself a container. The worker then runs on a separate Docker server with no GPU. Flop validated this on October 30, 2026 on an A40, but says a full paid session through a Pod hasn't been run yet. RunPod serverless is not supported. One warning from the plain-language guide: stopping the programs doesn't stop rental billing, so delete the machine at the provider when you're done.

How does setup work?

The miner guide's steps, in short:

1. Get the release pack. Download Flop's public miner release pack and check its checksum. It holds the pinned images, Compose files and network settings.
2. Create a miner account. Use a dedicated sr25519 account, separate from any validator account, with its key kept in a protected file on the host.
3. Get the stake sponsored. The miner signs a request to the stake sponsor, which registers the account at a 10% commission and posts about 1 million $FLOP of stake. That stake stays the sponsor's. It can only be used as stake, never transferred or spent on inference.
4. Load the model. Use the operator's pre-registered Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct and check its hash.
5. Connect and start. Start the model server, then the worker, with Docker Compose.
6. Calibrate. The network sends test jobs to measure real throughput.

The CLI used in these steps is the official flop CLI, which prints version 0.4.0 from its public container image. Our SDK and CLI guide lists the official packages.

What is FLOP miner calibration?

Before real requests arrive, the network measures how much work the machine delivers. The plain-language guide says this takes from under an hour to several hours and is renewed every week. Keep the machine running the whole time. A test job left unanswered past its 600-block deadline expires and slashes the miner's stake.

The technical guide gives the source requirement as 64 verified jobs over at least 600 finalized blocks, and warns that a deployed devnet may still require 512 jobs over 21,600 blocks. A calibration cap expires after seven days. Changing the GPUs in a host means calibrating again.

Can I join the FLOP devnet without the private network?

Yes. Since October 30, 2026 miners join over public endpoints, skipping Flop's private tailnet, and since November 2 no invitation is needed. Instead of a tailnet key, the public release pack lists the endpoints: wss://rpc.devnet.flop.network for the chain, https://mailbox.devnet.flop.network, and the stake sponsor at faucet.flop.network. You point a DNS name at your host, open ports 80 and 443, and a Caddy sidecar gets an HTTPS certificate.

On this path, sponsorship, registration and calibration work today. Paid sessions don't yet. The guide says the public data-availability endpoints and gateway admission for public miners are still being finished.

What are the devnet limits?

Limit	Value
New sponsored miners	At most 100 per rolling 24 hours (raised from 10 on Nov 7)
Sponsored stake	At most 200 million $FLOP per 24 hours (raised from 20 million); a new miner starts at about 1 million, with top-ups to at most 2 million
Sponsorships	One per account
Public sponsor route	6 requests per minute per address

A request past a daily limit gets an error and nothing is registered. The miner manual now points to https://faucet.flop.network/limits for live budgets; see our FLOP devnet limits page.

Can an AI agent set up the miner for me?

Partly. Flop publishes a setup-miner skill for AI coding agents, installed with pnpm dlx skills add https://docs.flop.network/skills/setup-miner/SKILL.md -g -y. The guide says installing it adds no miner software and grants no network access, so the steps above still apply. It also says never to paste the miner seed or session tokens into the conversation. The skill keeps them in files on the host.

How do I stay safe?

• Keep your miner seed in a file on the host. Flop's guide says never to paste it into a chat, including one with an AI agent.
• On the private tailnet, Flop's operators can reach every port on your machine, so run nothing else on it you wouldn't share with them.
• Use the exact image versions Flop pins, from the release manifest, not floating "latest" tags.
• Addresses in Flop's docs that end in .invalid are placeholders, not real endpoints.
• Ignore anyone selling miner slots or setup access. Check our scam warnings and official links.

Does devnet mining count for the airdrop?

No. The devnet earns nothing. On the testnet, miners share a 1.2 billion $FLOP pool by verified compute served. Our testnet rewards guide explains how that converts at genesis.

Sponsored stake on staging networks is covered in FLOP staking. For the normative bond rules, see the Yellow Paper.

FAQ

How do I set up a FLOP miner?

Flop's official guide runs two Docker programs on an NVIDIA GPU host: a model server and a worker. You download Flop's public release pack, create a miner account, get the stake sponsored automatically and pass calibration. No invitation has been needed on the devnet since November 2, 2026.

Which GPU does Flop's miner guide use?

Flop's validated devnet test used an NVIDIA A40. The draft testnet page recommends 16 GB or more of VRAM per GPU. Other NVIDIA cards may work if they fit the model and pass their own throughput check.

Can I mine FLOP on RunPod?

A RunPod GPU Pod can run the model server, with the worker on a separate Docker server. Flop validated this on an A40 on October 30, 2026. RunPod serverless is not supported.

Do I need to buy FLOP to stake as a miner?

No. On the devnet a sponsor posts about 1 million $FLOP of stake that stays the sponsor's, and Flop says testnet stake is sponsored too. No FLOP token is on sale.

How long does FLOP miner calibration take?

From under an hour to several hours, according to Flop's plain-language guide, and it is renewed every week. A test job left unanswered past its deadline is slashed, so keep the machine running.

Does mining on the FLOP devnet earn rewards?

No. The devnet earns nothing and counts nothing toward the airdrop. Miner rewards start with verified compute on the public testnet, now targeted for November 24, 2026, subject to readiness.