FLOP mining profitability: GPU weights and the official calculator

Flop Labs hasn't published any real mining returns, because the network isn't live yet. What it has published is an official miner revenue model: a calculator that compares renting or owning GPUs from the testnet through the first halving. The page calls itself a "Scenario model · not a forecast" and warns that "$FLOP can be worth zero." This guide explains what the calculator assumes, how much each GPU counts for and what cuts into returns. Every figure comes from draft pages last updated October 5, 2026. None of it is financial advice.

Is FLOP mining profitable?

Nobody knows yet. The official miner page has a section headed "Profitability is conditional". It says results change with "demand, token price, verified utilization, reward era, G_n share, and capacity cost", and calls the calculator's output "stress signals rather than ROI forecasts". There is no FLOP market price before genesis (is FLOP launched?), so any profit figure you see today depends on an assumed token value.

How does a FLOP miner earn?

The miner page defines operator return as session payments plus block rewards, less capacity cost.

• Block rewards. Miners share 75% of the 96 FLOP era-0 block reward, which is 72 FLOP per rewarded block. The pool is split by verified compute, G_n, which the page calls "the network's unit of calibrated, verified compute". The revenue page puts the whole miner pool at 186,624,000 FLOP per 30-day month. It halves every 730 days and reaches a 2.25 FLOP floor after five halvings.
• Session fees. The target split gives the miner 85% of each inference fee. The revenue page says settlement currently pays the miner 99%, with 1% to an audit pool, until the validator fee leg is built.

Your share of the block-reward pool is your verified compute divided by the network's. The calculator approximates it as "your H100-equivalents ÷ total verified network compute".

How much does each GPU count for?

The calculator starts every device with a reward weight relative to an NVIDIA H100 SXM. Flop calls these "rough planning ratios based on matrix throughput, memory bandwidth, and the local Mac benchmark where available". Live rewards use measured, verified compute instead.

Device	Starting weight (H100 SXM = 1.00)	30-day cost the calculator starts from
NVIDIA B200	2.28	$4,241 rent (Runpod)
AMD Instinct MI300X	1.32	$1,433 rent (Hot Aisle)
NVIDIA H200	1.00	$3,161 rent (Runpod)
NVIDIA H100 SXM	1.00	$2,153 rent (Runpod)
NVIDIA H100 NVL	0.84	$2,297 rent (Runpod)
NVIDIA H100 PCIe	0.76	$2,081 rent (Runpod)
NVIDIA L40S	0.36	$713 rent (Runpod)
NVIDIA RTX 5090	0.21	$713 rent (Runpod)
AMD RX 9070 XT desktop	0.20	$66 ($1,800 purchase placeholder)
Intel Arc Pro B70 desktop	0.19	$91 ($2,500 purchase placeholder)
NVIDIA RTX 4090	0.17	$497 rent (Runpod)
RTX 5090 laptop	0.11	$183 ($5,000 purchase placeholder)
RTX 4090 laptop	0.09	$110 ($3,000 purchase placeholder)
RTX 4070 Ti desktop	0.08	$66 ($1,800 purchase placeholder)
NVIDIA RTX 3090	0.07	$331 rent (Runpod)
NVIDIA DGX Spark / GB10	0.06	$172 ($4,699 purchase)
MacBook Pro M3 Max	0.002	$146 ($3,999 placeholder)
Mac mini M4 Pro	0.001	$51 ($1,399 launch price)

By these planning ratios, an RTX 4090 counts for about a sixth of an H100 SXM, and an RTX 3090 for about a fourteenth. The page warns that vendor FP4, FP8, INT8 and FP16 claims "are not equivalent measurements, so treat every preset as a starting estimate rather than promised G_n." It also says rental rates and purchase anchors "were checked 15 July 2026", and that both TEE and non-TEE hardware can take part with no TEE premium in the model.

A device appearing in the calculator doesn't mean it meets the testnet hardware spec. The testnet page recommends 16 GB+ VRAM per GPU, and the official miner form accepts "Consumer GPU with at least 16GB of VRAM". Our how to mine FLOP guide covers the requirements.

What does the calculator assume about costs?

Rented GPUs use the editable 30-day rent in the table, which already covers the provider's power and hardware. Rental cost starts at mainnet, and "no testnet rental is assumed". Owned desktops and laptops spread their purchase price over 820 days: the 90-day testnet plus 730 days to the first halving. In the model, reward revenue only starts at mainnet and runs for 730 days, so an owned card carries 90 days of cost before it earns anything. Electricity, financing, repairs, taxes and residual value aren't modelled.

What does the base case assume about the FLOP price?

Every scenario starts from the tokenomics workbook's month-1 base case: a $100M network value on 1,200 H100-equivalents of network compute. Because only 0.46bn of the 4.4bn FLOP minted at genesis would circulate at launch, that works out to about $0.22 per FLOP. The page is explicit that this "is a planning input, not a target or market forecast." The other presets, such as "Flat", "Boom → bust" and "Downside", are described as "stress-test paths, not forecasts". Treat any FLOP price you see quoted from this calculator the same way.

What reduces mining returns?

The revenue page names two kinds of dilution:

• Supply dilution. In the base case, circulating supply grows from 0.46bn FLOP at launch to about 9.6bn at the day-730 boundary, as block emission, the reserve release, agent spending and the miner airdrop unlock add tokens. The page says: "At a constant network value, the implied token price falls about 95%."
• Share dilution. As more verified compute joins the network, a fixed operator's share of the miner pool falls.

Session income has its own limits. The model "assumes every utilized hour is sold" and "does not model demand saturation or competition for paid sessions". Its default prices, $0.20 per million output tokens and $0.04 per million input tokens, are "market averages, not a protocol tariff". The page also notes that an earlier version overstated session income "about 3.4×" by pricing a blended token rate as output, and that it now prices prefill and decode separately.

How much stake does a FLOP miner need?

The miner page says a miner stakes "at least 10,000 FLOP plus the runtime-calculated capacity exposure bond". That bond scales with the compute you're calibrated to serve and has no cap, and its rate is "still under economic reconciliation". On the testnet, the network sponsors the stake miners must post (testnet page). After genesis, a miner can post its locked airdrop as its stake (airdrop page). Proven fraud can cost 100% of it: see proof of useful inference.

Where does the airdrop fit in?

The calculator adds "no compute-based genesis award", because personal airdrop allocations are score-based and sit outside the cash-flow model. Testnet work is what earns a share of the 1.2bn FLOP miner airdrop pool. A quarter is liquid at genesis, and the airdrop page says the rest unlocks one FLOP for each FLOP the miner earns on mainnet, "from block rewards and inference fees alike". Our airdrop guide has the full rules.

FAQ

Is FLOP mining profitable?

Unknown. The network isn't live and FLOP has no market price. Flop's official revenue model is labelled a scenario model and "not a forecast", and the miner page says profitability depends on demand, token price, verified utilisation, reward era, your share of verified compute and capacity cost.

Can an RTX 4090 mine FLOP?

The official miner form accepts consumer GPUs with at least 16GB of VRAM, and the RTX 4090 is one of the presets in Flop's revenue calculator. Its starting reward weight is 0.17 of an H100 SXM, which Flop describes as a rough planning ratio rather than a measured result.

How much FLOP does a miner earn per block?

All miners share 72 FLOP per block in era 0, which is 75% of the 96 FLOP block reward. Each miner's cut is proportional to its verified compute, and the pool halves every 730 days.

Can I mine FLOP on a Mac?

The calculator includes a MacBook Pro M3 Max at a weight of 0.002 and a Mac mini M4 Pro at 0.001, relative to an H100 SXM at 1.00. Flop describes its Mac benchmark as "a local sanity anchor only".

How much do I need to stake to mine FLOP?

At least 10,000 FLOP plus a capacity exposure bond that scales with your calibrated compute, according to the draft miner page. The network sponsors miner stake during the testnet.