FLOP tokenomics: supply, emission, halvings and allocation

FLOP's supply starts at 4.4 billion tokens and grows through block rewards that halve every two years, down to a small permanent tail. All figures below come from the draft Yellow Paper v0.5.0 and its parameter file, so they can still change before mainnet.

Key numbers

ParameterValue
Genesis supply4,400,000,000 FLOP
Block time1 second
Block reward at launch96 FLOP
HalvingsEvery 730 days, five times: 96, 48, 24, 12, 6, then 3
Perpetual tail3 FLOP per block from day 3,650, or 94,608,000 FLOP per year
Team and Foundation subsidy8 FLOP per block each at launch, halving with the reward and ending on day 3,650
Total subsidy1,955,232,000 FLOP
Supply after 10 yearsAbout 18.09 billion FLOP
Decimals18

Genesis allocation

At genesis, the entire supply sits in four buckets. The Yellow Paper rules out any VC pre-mint, auction or team allocation.

BucketFLOPShare
Miner airdrop1,200,000,00027.27%
Validator airdrop, which is the validator bond1,200,000,00027.27%
Agent airdrop1,200,000,00027.27%
Ecosystem reserve800,000,00018.18%
Total4,400,000,000100%

How each bucket is earned and unlocked is covered in the FLOP airdrop guide.

Block reward split

RecipientShareFLOP per block, first two yearsNotes
Miners75%72Paid for verified inference work
Validators10%9.6Split by stake, 1.1x weight for the current finality committee, compounded into locked stake
Agents10%9.6Accrues in a protocol pool, distribution policy not ratified yet
Stakers5%4.8Accrues in a protocol pool, distribution policy not ratified yet

Flop Labs and the FLOP Foundation receive their subsidy through a separate mint of 8 FLOP per block each, on top of the 96 FLOP reward. It halves on the same schedule and stops completely on day 3,650.

Emission schedule

Each era lasts 730 days, or 63,072,000 blocks.

EraDaysReward per blockSubsidy per blockNew FLOP in the eraSupply at the end
Era 00 to 73096167,064,064,00011,464,064,000
Era 1730 to 1,4604883,532,032,00014,996,096,000
Era 21,460 to 2,1902441,766,016,00016,762,112,000
Era 32,190 to 2,920122883,008,00017,645,120,000
Era 42,920 to 3,65061441,504,00018,086,624,000
TailFrom 3,6503094,608,000 per yearAbout +0.5% per year

Two things stand out:

  • Issuance is front-loaded. The first two years mint about 7.1 billion FLOP, more than the whole genesis supply. The first year alone adds about 3.5 billion.
  • There is no hard cap. Like Monero, and unlike Bitcoin, supply keeps growing forever at a low rate once the halvings are over.

17.2 or 18.1 billion? Some early summaries quote about 17.2 billion FLOP after ten years. That figure used the older 3.5 billion genesis supply. Flop Labs later raised the validator bond, which lifted genesis to 4.4 billion and the ten-year supply to about 18.1 billion.

Fees and burns

  • Transaction fees: 10% is burned. The ratified target sends 80% to miners and 10% to validators.
  • Inference sessions: the agent's escrow pays the miner directly, with no settlement fee. Reserved capacity that goes unused is not refunded.
  • Failed sessions: an early-close penalty is burned or sent to the Foundation, never to the miner.
  • Slashing: stakes taken from dishonest operators go to the FLOP Foundation.

Stakes and deposits

ParticipantMinimum
Validator1,200,000 FLOP, with at most 1,000 active validators
Miner10,000 FLOP plus 0.01 FLOP per GFLOP/s of calibrated capacity
Agent identity10 FLOP, refundable
PublisherA refundable deposit sized to the model weights it stores

What is still open

  • The unlock rules of the agent airdrop, including the spend-to-unlock ratio and the vesting horizon.
  • The distribution policy of the agent and staker block-reward pools.
  • Who controls the ecosystem reserve and how it is released.
  • How testnet validators convert into the validator cohort.

We update this page when the numbers move. To follow changes as they happen, watch the Yellow Paper repository.