Staking and slashing
Becoming a miner or a validator requires staking FLOP, and stake is subject to slashing for dishonesty.
Miner stake
A miner posts a 10,000 FLOP base self-stake plus a capacity exposure bond.
The nominal coefficient is 0.01 FLOP per calibrated GFLOP/s, but the live runtime also multiplies it by the 604,800-block revocation window and the 1.25x surge factor. Those constants currently imply 7,560 FLOP per calibrated GFLOP/s.
> Do not estimate required stake from the 0.01 coefficient alone. Query the runtime > requirement for the calibrated miner account.
Because stake scales with calibrated capacity, large miners cannot outgrow their bond — the largest miners face the largest absolute exposure.
Validator stake
A validator stakes FLOP to join the set, which is capped at 1,000. Roughly 50 rotate each month on availability and uptime: the worst-performing 50 are replaced by the top 50 in waiting.
No delegated staking
There is no delegated staking into validators or miners: validator stake (1,200,000 FLOP) and miner stakes are self-stake only. A FLOP holder cannot back an operator's position for a share of its rewards.
Holders who do not run hardware can participate in the duration-locked community staking pool, which shares 5% of block rewards across seven duration tiers without slashing risk.
Slashing
| Fault | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Liveness (being offline) | 1-5% |
| Provable fraud, collusion, evidence forgery | 100% slash, ejection, blacklist |
| Publishing a dishonest block (validator) | Draconian slashing and a permanent ban |
| Attestation failure on the optional HARD tier | 100% slash |
| Failing to serve retained audit data (DA provider) | Slashed |
A fraud conviction needs on-chain cryptographic evidence; there is no oracle input to bribe. Slashed collateral is transferred to the FLOP Foundation account, not burned.
Status
Draft whitepaper. The miner capacity-stake constants are under economic reconciliation.