Arthur Hayes Returns to Lead Flop Labs, Blockchain AI Project

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, has returned to lead Flop Labs, a new project developing blockchain infrastructure for artificial intelligence agents. In an announcement on August 18, Hayes stated that he would 'lead' Flop Labs but did not describe his responsibilities or compensation.

Flop Network plans to conduct an airdrop in the fourth quarter of 2026 and aims to launch its genesis block in the first quarter of 2027. The project's native token, FLOP, will have a '100% fair launch' without a presale or venture capital allocation.

Hayes described FLOP as 'food for your AI agent,' which would be used by autonomous software agents to pay for computing power, data storage, memory, and other digital services. The project plans to use 'proof of useful inference' as its consensus mechanism.