Arthur Hayes proposes Flop Network as a global market for AI compute in his Oct 26, 2026 essay The Trifecta.

AI agents pay in FLOP when they send inference requests, owners of GPUs/CPUs execute them and earn FLOP. Each block records how much verified work was done and paid, producing an hourly onchain compute price in FLOP that Hayes wants as a world benchmark.

Buyers can book capacity up to 30 days ahead as a standard tradable contract (FCU/RCU). Miners post FLOP collateral and lose it if they fail to deliver.

On top of that price he proposes quarterly futures and a USD-settled perpetual, so companies can hedge rising compute costs and traders can speculate. He compares it to BitMEX perps and Ethena's USDe.

This is a concept, not live trading. @flop_labs says devnet is coming soon and testnet/airdrop in a few weeks, while Hayes warned on Oct 21 that THERE IS NO FLOP TOKEN, anything offered now is a scam. Tokenomics post says no VC allocation, no presale, every token earned.