How to mine FLOP: GPU requirements and miner economics

"Mining" FLOP doesn't mean hashing. Miners on Flop Network run AI inference. They serve model requests from agents, prove the work was done correctly, and are paid in $FLOP. This guide covers the hardware Flop Labs recommends, how miners are paid and what to expect on the testnet. All figures come from draft documents and may change.

GPU requirements

The whitepaper says: "Any GPU with at least 16 GB of VRAM can participate; clusters of eight to sixteen units serve the larger models." The testnet page gives the same recommendation: a single GPU or a cluster, with 16 GB+ VRAM per unit. It adds that the spec is subject to refinement before the testnet opens.

Some things worth knowing:

• Consumer cards are allowed. The intro page says "Ordinary GPUs qualify". Confidential computing (TEE) is an optional tier, not an entry requirement.
• Enterprise GPUs with TEE can serve requests that demand hardware attestation. Agents can ask for this per request.
• Each miner runs one model at a time. The most-demanded open-weight models are kept on validator storage so they can be loaded quickly.
• At the Singapore launch event, attendees asked "whether a gaming GPU can mine". By the published spec, a gaming card with 16 GB or more of VRAM meets the minimum. Whether it earns enough to justify the power cost isn't known yet.

We aren't publishing a list of "compatible" card models. Flop Labs hasn't published one, and VRAM is the only stated threshold.

How miners earn

Miners have two income streams, according to the whitepaper:

1. Block rewards. Miners get 75% of every block reward, split in proportion to verified compute delivered, measured in FLOPs. The block reward starts at 96 FLOP per one-second block and halves every 730 days.
2. Inference fees. Miners get 85% of the fee for every session they serve. Fees are priced in dollar terms against the open market and paid in $FLOP.

Rewards are proportional to verified compute, "so consumer cards do not dilute enterprise cards and a larger card earns more only by delivering more." The whitepaper also says that "the block reward dominates in the early years". Ongoing rewards and fees are paid liquid, with no vesting.

No uptime requirement

The whitepaper says there is "no lease, minimum term or uptime requirement". A miner can run when it has spare capacity and "is never penalised for being offline". Slashing applies only when a miner accepts a session and fails to deliver it, or cheats.

Staking and slashing

Each miner registration posts a flat base stake plus a component that scales with capacity. The capacity part is still being finalised. Stake is returned roughly seven days after unbonding if there's no fault. During the testnet the network sponsors this stake. At mainnet, a miner's locked airdrop balance can count toward it.

A proven cheat can lose up to its entire stake and be banned. Verification layers include TOPLOC activation fingerprints, randomised re-execution by independent checkers, and optional TEE attestation.

Mining on testnet and the airdrop

Miners share a pool of 1.2bn FLOP in the genesis airdrop, pro rata to verified compute served on the testnet. At genesis, 25% is liquid. The remaining 75% unlocks one-for-one as the miner earns inference fees in settled sessions. Block rewards don't count toward unlocking. The airdrop guide has the full rules, including the anti-sybil provisions.

Steps to prepare (today)

1. Check your GPU has 16 GB+ VRAM per unit.
2. Register interest as a miner through the official testnet page only.
3. Wait for the miner client and onboarding docs, which the team says will be published when the testnet opens. Don't download "early miner clients" from anywhere else. See scam warnings.
4. Work out your power costs. Testnet tokens are worthless, so the airdrop is the only testnet reward.

The bigger thesis

Flop Labs links its miner supply story to Arthur Hayes' view that AI data centres are being overbuilt. In an Oct 7 post, the team wrote that when "the debt cracks, the GPUs stay plugged in and get cheap. That's the supply Flop is built for." Read our CNBC coverage.

Unknowns

There is no published client, no fee schedule, no final stake size and no profitability data yet. We'll update this page when there is. See also: validators, testnet, FAQ.