Hayes Aims for a Third Win With AI Compute Futures

Quarterly futures and perpetual swaps for AI compute sit at the center of a new proposal from Arthur Hayes. The benchmark price would be drawn from Flop Network, a blockchain that has not yet gone live.

The BitMEX co-founder describes these contracts as a bid for a third success, after the perpetual swap and synthetic dollars. Buyers of compute and market makers, though, would be hedging against a benchmark rooted in one token network.

Can a Single Token Anchor Compute's Price?

In Hayes's view, there is no single global price for compute. Instead, pricing is divided between chip rentals and token fees set per model.

His answer is the Flop Reference Compute Rate (FRCR), an hourly benchmark constructed from Flop Network inference tasks. Within that network, AI agents pay miners in FLOP, the project's token, for running AI model queries.

"The Trifecta" my latest essay on how @flop_labs compute spot market will become the reference price for all compute focused derivatives.

"This summer, I unveiled my idea for the Flop Network. FLOP is food for your AI agent. Agents will use FLOP in commerce because FLOP is…

— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) October 26, 2026

Even though the index is denominated in FLOP, the quarterly futures would accept dollar margin. That makes them a quanto instrument, settling in one currency while the asset is priced in another.

A perpetual swap without a maturity date would be introduced after that, carrying funding linked to an eight-hour premium index. Market makers, for their part, could mirror the trade by rolling strips of 30-day forward compute units.

Sellers would put up FLOP bonds on top of their fees, and failing to deliver within 24 hours would forfeit those bonds.

Can That Track Record Translate to Compute?

Hayes lays claim to the BitMEX perpetual swap from 2016 and the synthetic-dollar design behind Ethena's USDe. USDe is a stablecoin that hedges using short perpetual swaps.

The token's supply reached a peak of roughly $14.8 billion in October 2025, however, and has slipped below $5 billion since, according to DefiLlama.

The FLOP testnet schedule, meanwhile, is not yet fixed; Flop Labs' site listed no launch date as of mid-October. The company has set its sights on genesis — the network's first block — for the first quarter of 2027.

Hayes has also forecast a bailout in the aftermath of the AI data center boom. A market for hedges could help put a price on that risk, though only if traders will accept a benchmark linked to one token.