FLOP testnet date to be decided early next week, Hayes says

Flop hasn't set a new testnet date yet, but Arthur Hayes says one is coming soon. At 21:08 UTC on November 4, 2026, Hayes posted that the devnet "is going well" and that the team is "ironing out some things and changing parts of the protocol". He added: "We will make a determination on testnet launch date early next week."

The @flop_labs Devnet is going well. We are ironing out some things and changing parts of the protocol. Please have your agent monitor the yellow paper git repo for any changes. We will make a determination on testnet launch date early next week.

— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) November 4, 2026

That is the first official word on timing since the November 3 working target passed. Flop's timeline FAQ, unchanged since October 30, called that date "a target rather than a fixed date". Hayes didn't give a new date, only when the team expects to decide one. Our testnet hub will carry the date once Flop announces it.

What should operators watch?

Hayes asked people to "have your agent monitor the yellow paper git repo for any changes". The official repo is flop-labs/yellowpaper, the protocol specification that Flop's testnet page calls the definitive spec, still marked "not yet final". When we checked on November 5, the latest commit was an October 26 sync of version 0.5.0 (draft), so the protocol changes Hayes mentions haven't reached the public spec yet. Our Flop GitHub guide lists the repo and the other official ones.

If you run an AI agent, you can point it at the repo's commit history and have it flag new commits. Use only the flop-labs account, and check any link you're sent against flop.finance/official or our official links list.

Will my devnet node carry over to the testnet?

No. Replying to a user who asked whether anything carries over, @flop_labs wrote: "we will not migrate any state from devnet to testnet. start fresh". The testnet page already says the same about mainnet: testnet chain state isn't migrated at genesis, and only the allocation carries forward.

So devnet balances, registrations and on-chain history won't follow you. What you learn setting up a server does. The devnet still earns nothing: the timeline FAQ says "No rewards, no airdrop weight, no scoring."

Has anything else changed?

Not on Flop's status pages. On November 5 the testnet status page still read "Status: planned", and the testnet page still said "Draft" and "Opens Q4 2026". The explorer's validator page still said "Package download unavailable" for package 0.2.0-devnet.1, as it did yesterday.

The validator manual also describes a prepared "public-testnet" profile in the next validator package. It says self-service public testnet onboarding "is still in progress" and that the next package "is unpublished". Our devnet validator guide covers the current steps, and the joining checklist covers what to prepare before testnet opens.

There is no FLOP token yet. Anyone selling FLOP or promising testnet spots for a fee is running a scam. FLOP never asks for a seed phrase. See FLOP scams.