The Web3 + AI Daily: On Arthur Hayes's Flop Labs

Arthur Hayes to let agents autonomously access and pay for compute.

Image generated using Ideogram.ai

Hello, everyone, and welcome to all newly joined subscribers!

This is the 93rd edition of The Web3 + AI Daily - your definitive guide to the intersection of blockchain and AI! Today I’m covering Flop Labs - a rising star on the Web3 + AI horizon, founded by a true crypto OG.

Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.

---

Flop Labs: Agents’ Native Payment Network

Arthur Hayes’s Next Challenge is Tackling the Agentic Economy

Flop Labs is a new kid on the Web3 + AI playground, but behind it stands a true crypto veteran. Arthur Hayes is the co-founder of the soon-to-be-sunset BitMEX exchange and the Chief Investment Officer of the Web3 VC firm Maelstrom. His latest venture is a new blockchain enabling AI agents to autonomously procure computational resources.

Over the last couple of months, Hayes has been very vocal about the imminent bursting of the AI bubble and the effects the skyrocketing investments in AI have on crypto:

Hayes said AI starved Bitcoin of the liquidity that would normally buoy it. He estimated that $1.5 trillion in debt was issued to fund AI buildout from November 2022 to now, against a near-identical $1.5 trillion rise in M2 money supply over the same window, meaning AI “sucked up all created dollars.”

His main thesis is one we should all take into consideration: the market is unable to absorb three mega IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI. If that bubble bursts, the US government may have little choice but to resort to money printing to bail out the debtors.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said the U.S. government may ultimately backstop AI infrastructure credit risk under an “AI safety first” framework. Hayes outlined two potential paths: the government directly assuming the buyer role for institutions such as Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX in the computing power market, or the Federal Reserve printing money to bail out insurers holding AI-related debt after defaults triggered by falling computing demand and a lack of buyers. He said both scenarios effectively rely on money printing to support AI infrastructure and related credit expansion.

Arthur Hayes@CryptoHayes

AI safety first: Either the USG assumes Anthropic, OpenAi, and SpaceX’s role as buyer of compute Or Fed prints money to bail out insurers who hold AI debt that went bad bc there was no longer a buyer of compute Choose one, both require printed money Yachtzee 😘😘😘😘

2:13 PM · Sep 13, 2026 · 122K Views

---

96 Replies · 42 Reposts · 468 Likes

Although Hayes's scenario assumes that the US government embraces an “AI Safety first” framework - seemingly at odds with the recent hardening of Trump‘s and his AI Czar, David Sacks' tone toward AI leaders - it could still prove valid, particularly given Trump’s continued support for AI and data centers as “the greatest economic development engine in history.”

---

Why Did Hayes Launch Flop Labs?

In August, Hayes unveiled Flop Labs - a new project to power the agentic commerce. The name “Flop” comes from a floating point operation per unit of time - a measurement of a computer’s processing speed and performance. It reflects Hayes’s ambition to turn $FLOP, the company’s crypto token, into a universal unit of account for compute.

Currently, a global unified market for compute does not exist. You can pay for GPU hours or chips, but you cannot pay at a fixed rate for the processing of a gigaflop of data.

Hayes envisions evaluating computational resources on a universal scale by benchmarking actual computational workload rather than using token amounts that vary by AI model.

Like many other crypto thought leaders, Hayes argues that fiat currencies are fundamentally unsuited to AI, but he doesn’t believe stablecoins are the answer either.

His thesis is that agents won’t care which AI model they're using or what kind of chip it runs on, as long as their requests are processed promptly and verifiably. As a result, he suggests, agents will gravitate toward the currency that is “the most easily converted into the thing they need to survive,” namely compute. This is precisely the role $FLOP is designed to play:

[The Flop blockchain is] where agents task miners to perform inference upon request for units of the $FLOP currency. In this way, should an agent wish to, at any point it can convert $FLOP into compute, and create intelligence.

This convertibility is what separates $FLOP from every rival vying for the agentic economy. Fiat-wrapped stablecoins are claims on human money; $FLOP is redeemable on demand for the one commodity an agent cannot exist without, making it the nearest thing yet created to a compute-backed currency. Nor is $FLOP merely spent and forgotten. It is locked by miners as stake to provide compute, locked by validators to secure the network, and staked by holders to earn yield — so the demand to hold $FLOP rises with network throughput rather than washing through it. Existing decentralised compute networks fail one side of this equation or the other: Many of their emissions skim a significant amount of value before a miner is paid, others pass fees through but have struggled to find demand. The Flop Network is designed to do both: near-total fee pass-through to those who do the work, and currency overwhelmingly issued against verified useful inference. $FLOP is also deliberately one currency, not two: the same token pays for compute, stakes the network, and settles agent-to-agent commerce, avoiding the friction of rival dual-token designs.

---

Flop Labs: Consensus & Tokenomics

Flop Network is where the agents that need AI computation and the miners providing that computation meet. In simple terms, it is the marketplace that will allow fully autonomous agents to access the fuel they need to survive and the payment infrastructure to settle their deals.

The Flop blockchain will rely on Proof-of-Useful-Inference (PoUI), also know as Proof-of-Useful-Intelligence or Proof-of-Useful Work - a consensus mechanism where network participants perform real-world artificial intelligence tasks, such as model inference, instead of wasting energy on arbitrary cryptographic puzzles. I told you all about the benefits of PoUW below:

Last week, the $FLOP tokenomics design was also revealed. As Hayes declared to Laura Shin (the podcast recording is linked above), there will be no investor allocation and no presale:

The genesis supply (4,400,000,000 $FLOP or 24.3% of the total network supply at year 10) is distributed through the testnet airdrop — the bulk of it earned by miners, validators, and agents, with a reserve funding ecosystem growth.

Every token thereafter is issued block by block, in public. Nothing is pre-sold, and nothing unlocks ahead of the network’s users.

Every $FLOP is earned through a role in the network.

Flop Labs@flop_labs

Latest $ FLOP tokenomics on one page based on community feedback. No VC allocation, no presale, every token is earned.

7:11 AM · Sep 10, 2026 · 51.5K Views

---

64 Replies · 60 Reposts · 445 Likes

Only contributors to the network’s testnet will be eligible to profit from the genesis airdrop:

Flop Testnet is planned for Q4 2026 and runs for roughly ninety days, with mainnet to follow in Q1 2027. It is a full rehearsal of the network in test tokens: miners serve real inference, validators produce blocks and check work certificates, and agents buy compute. Participation is what earns the genesis airdrop.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Flop Labs delivers.

---

Thank you for reading! I hope you found this article insightful.

If you’d like to keep up with the latest developments at the burgeoning intersection of blockchain and AI, I invite you to subscribe.

And if you find value in my writing, consider supporting the newsletter. I’d greatly appreciate it.

The Web3 + AI Book Club is live on Fable. Our September title is 'The Nerd Reich' by Gil Duran. Follow the link below and come join our literary community.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to share your thoughts here or reach out on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Firefly.social.

---

Disclaimer: The content of this newsletter is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing contained herein should be construed as financial advice or as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any of the companies or assets mentioned.

Please don’t take my views at face value. Instead, do your own research (DYOR), think critically, and share your perspective so we can challenge ideas, learn from one another, and arrive at better conclusions through thoughtful discussion.