Arthur Hayes Sets November 24 Date for FLOP Testnet and Airdrop

TL;DR:

• Confirmed date: According to Arthur Hayes’s November 13, 2026 announcement, the FLOP public testnet and airdrop will begin on November 24.
• Protocol purpose: Flop Network is a blockchain designed for autonomous artificial intelligence agents that use the FLOP token to pay for inference and decentralized storage.
• Initial supply: According to the draft technical paper (version 0.5.0), the proposal contemplates a genesis block supply of 4.4 billion FLOP tokens.

BitMEX co-founder and current Flop Labs leader Arthur Hayes has marked November 24, 2026 on the calendar as the definitive date for the start of the project’s public testnet and airdrop. This announcement, communicated by Hayes in an X post on November 13, represents the first firm date provided since the project’s launch in August, following the passing of two previous targets that concluded without deployment.

24 Nov 2026 will be the date that @flop_labs Testnet / Airdrop begins.

Any changes or update to this timing will be communicated in advance. LFG!

— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) November 13, 2026

The updated schedule considerably reduces the time window for the team to meet its mainnet launch target during the first quarter of 2027. According to project information, the testnet will run for approximately 90 days and will constitute the main mechanism to obtain a share of the airdrop in the genesis block, which will require active user participation.

Flop Labs is developing Flop Network, a blockchain infrastructure geared toward autonomous artificial intelligence agents capable of executing tasks without direct human intervention. In accordance with the designed architecture, these agents will use the FLOP token to directly defray the costs of inference—the computational processing that an artificial intelligence model performs to generate responses—and decentralized memory storage. Hayes has referred to the digital asset as a fundamental resource for the operation of automated agents.

Technical Structure and Tokenomics of the Project 

The ecosystem operates through a model called proof of useful inference (PoUI), in which miners contribute graphics processing unit (GPU) power to execute real artificial intelligence workloads in exchange for rewards. Meanwhile, validators are responsible for verifying the correct execution of tasks and contributing to the chain’s security.

In August, Hayes announced his return to the sector to lead Flop Labs under a scheme that promised the absence of pre-sales, venture capital backing, and a fair launch. The initial roadmap envisioned a large airdrop distribution in the fourth quarter of 2026 and the creation of the genesis block in the first three months of 2027. During an appearance at the TOKEN2049 event held in Singapore in October, a genesis supply close to 2.48 billion tokens was initially projected.

However, the economic figures have been modified in the draft technical paper, version 0.5.0, updated on September 24. Said document proposes a genesis block supply of 4.4 billion FLOP tokens, which will be distributed in their entirety through the airdrop. The preliminary allocation contemplates 1.2 billion for miners, an identical figure for validators and artificial intelligence agents, and 800 million destined for an ecosystem reserve for growth programs and referrals.

The project’s development has exceeded various previous deadlines, including a target set for late October and a provisional date for November 3 that also expired. In response to this, Flop Labs maintains an active development network (devnet) for builders to carry out tests in a controlled environment, although the organization has clarified that activity on said network does not grant rewards nor is it counted toward the airdrop.

With the start of the testnet scheduled for November 24, the testnet would extend until approximately February 22, 2027 if the full 90-day period is completed. Flop Labs warns that FLOP tokens do not yet exist in the market and that any current offer for sale or minting constitutes fraud, urging the community to verify exclusively the official channels on GitHub and the X account @flop_labs.