$PI

Happy one-year anniversary to the open network pioneers! The Open Network launched on February 20, 2025, marking a key milestone in Pi’s history, connecting Pi’s blockchain, identity verification community, and Web3 ecosystem with the outside world.

Before the open network, the Pi community collaboratively built the ecosystem over six years to ensure Pi’s readiness and sustainable utility. This development phase enabled Pi to develop real applications and tools for pioneers to interact with millions of pioneers, verify their identities, and prepare the network for real-world assets and production processes.

From the beginning, Pi was designed to be freely accessible, allowing anyone to mine without technical or financial barriers. This design not only enables broad distribution and inclusivity but also allows the network and all participants to patiently invest in building a comprehensive, utility-based ecosystem.

Since then, the network has continued to advance in line with Pi’s long-term vision and strategy—to create an inclusive, utility-driven, widely used cryptocurrency. The first year of the Open Network’s progress includes developments in the Pi ecosystem, application development initiatives, tool enhancements, and the release of innovative products and platform-level tools. Highlights include Pi App Studio, Pi Network Ventures, DEX/AMM/token creation features, and more. Pioneers can review the first 100 days of the open network and the year-end 2025 update blogs for deeper insights into these developments.

To celebrate this milestone, Pi founders Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan answered a series of questions to give Pioneers a deeper understanding of Pi’s strategy, approach, and current work since the Open Network, as well as clarify the ongoing direction and priorities of Pi’s development. Watch the full video below for an in-depth discussion of these topics! This blog provides a high-level overview and shares ways pioneers can participate in the celebration.


Pi founders specifically addressed these questions, encouraging pioneers to watch the full video for more details:

Why does Pi feel so different from other blockchains? Why is utility important?
What is the network currently working on?
What is the Pi ecosystem token? What is the design philosophy behind the mainnet ecosystem token?
Why is Pi KYC important? What’s next?
Why is Pi focusing on artificial intelligence? What’s the relationship between AI and blockchain?
Pioneers can read the full transcript of the video here.

Looking Ahead to the Next Year
Pi’s approach—focusing on utility, mass adoption, identity verification, and user experience—embodies a unique mainstream success model that sets Pi apart from the broader blockchain industry.

In the coming year, Pi will focus on expanding application and utility creation opportunities, strengthening tools that support ecosystem innovation, and accelerating processes that pioneers care about, such as KYC and mainnet migration. Work includes aligning Web3 tools with overall product innovation, addressing crypto challenges like digital identity, fostering interoperability, and enhancing the overall experience for developers, businesses, and pioneers.

By simplifying building, participating, and creating, Pi continues to evolve its accessible, utility-driven ecosystem.

This blog will highlight two of the many projects Pi is advancing to strengthen the network. Pioneers are again encouraged to watch the full video for a detailed discussion of these topics.

Mainnet Ecosystem Token Design
The Pi ecosystem token is a community-created token issued on Pi, designed to support real utility and product innovation. Pi emphasizes that the network design of the ecosystem token—the way it integrates into the Pi ecosystem and supports real products and services—is the most critical factor in creating the mainnet ecosystem token.

In the broader crypto space, a core issue is the disconnect between token issuance and real innovation. While tokens are a powerful feature in Web3, most tokens on other networks are primarily fundraising tools—yet these projects often fail to deliver meaningful utility and practical products. This disconnect between token issuance and product creation is a structural problem in Web3.

Pi is unique because the network has collective resources, such as a large community with real users, and a strong community providing real products. Pi’s approach is to directly integrate crypto tokens into the evolution of products and innovation. To do this, Pi’s current launch projects encourage new designs based on Pi’s existing resources and infrastructure: practical tokens designed for user acquisition. This means projects issue tokens to meet user acquisition needs (rather than fundraising), and integrate tokens into products to enable use cases. Users are responsible for projects, oversee their products, provide feedback for improvements, and own practical tokens issued by the project in a transparent and capable manner. Pi is used within these mechanisms to coordinate and facilitate this process.

Watch the video (or read the transcript), where Pi’s founders introduce the design philosophy behind the Pi ecosystem token.

Key features of this new structure include:

All proceeds invested by participants in Pi are used to acquire tokens, rather than transferring to the project issuing the tokens, as in typical token issuance models. Instead, all proceeds are irreversibly deposited into liquidity pools to support token stability and health.
Projects issuing tokens under this new launch structure must have a functioning product, i.e., a working application, as a prerequisite for token issuance.
Participants’ involvement with project products may bring certain favorable terms or benefits during the release.
Review the detailed ecosystem token design proposal and leave feedback

Pi is releasing specific details about the Pi Network ecosystem token design as part of the Pi Community Review (PRC). Given the importance of the ecosystem token layer and its innovative approach and design, community input should be considered to evaluate and iteratively improve such designs in practice. Remember, the design intentionally differs from existing models to address the issues mentioned earlier, aiming to combine the powerful Web3 feature of tokens with real products and innovation, leveraging Pi Network’s existing strengths and resources.

Pioneers can read the full details of the ecosystem token design on GitHub. Feedback is welcome—pioneers are encouraged to comment, discuss with other community members, and use GitHub features like issues or pull requests to share specific suggestions for parts of the design. For users without a GitHub account, a Google Form will also be provided for high-level feedback.

Pi will review and consider community input from GitHub and high-level feedback submitted via Google Form. As with any design process, not all suggestions will be adopted, but feedback will be evaluated to determine if and what adjustments are appropriate. The design will also be further revised based on feedback from the launch projects.

Expanding Pi KYC’s Utility
Pi KYC is fundamental to network integrity and authenticity. More broadly, Pi views identity verification as a key unresolved challenge in Web3 and a necessary step before large-scale real-world asset onboarding.

But beyond internal use within Pi Network, the next phase of this initiative is to treat KYC itself as a service—KYC as a platform capability. Identity recognition is the foundation for meaningful integration with the real-world economy. Any transfer of value or ownership requires knowing who is transferring and who is receiving. This is a fundamental identity issue—and thus involves KYC.

In the near term, Pi will offer Pi KYC solutions as a service to Web3 and traditional enterprises (without sharing any user data). Pi’s unique KYC approach offers third parties distinct advantages:

Global geographic coverage
Scalability
Hybrid model combining AI and manual verification workflows
Compliance with sanctions checks
Cross-network comparison
Support for different regulatory formats
In the long run, Pi’s identity verification network itself, as a powerful network-level collective resource, aims to enable services and use cases to build and integrate on top. Users retain control over their identities and data, while also having the option to participate in applications built on the identity verification network. The network, in turn, provides practical value for external services requiring manual verification.

This is far more than just Pi’s Pi. Solving KYC is a prerequisite for many major challenges in Web3, including real-world assets. More broadly, in a world filled with bots, agents, and increasingly human-like AI, answering a simple but critical question—who is real—becomes essential.
Growth infographic since the open network
Since launching the open network, Pi has continuously expanded across multiple dimensions of the ecosystem—from mainnet migration, developer activity, application growth, to overall network participation. These milestones reflect steady progress driven by the collective efforts of global pioneers, developers, enterprises, and KYC verifiers.

The infographic below highlights key ecosystem growth metrics achieved over the past year since the open network launch.


Celebrate pioneers with Pi’s Pi badge and raffle!
To honor the collective effort of the global pioneer community in building and supporting the network, Pi will launch a community-centric initiative to recognize pioneers’ contributions and encourage participation across the ecosystem until Pi Day. The project features commemorative in-app badges, which eligible pioneers can display on social media and various Pi apps, along with community raffle activities.

More details on how to participate—including eligibility, schedule, and more—will be announced in next week’s dedicated announcement. Pioneers are encouraged to stay tuned and prepare to join the celebration.

The Significance of This Anniversary
Pi’s first anniversary of the open network reflects the contributions of pioneers worldwide. From developing applications, enhancing infrastructure, to identity verification, ecosystem participation, and community support, pioneer involvement has been vital in shaping Pi’s current form.

“Pi” has always been a collective effort. The ongoing progress of the ecosystem will continue to be driven by collaboration among developers, enterprises, and pioneers, creating meaningful utility and real-world adoption—paving a path others have not walked before.
Thank you to every pioneer who has contributed to this unique journey and continues to shape the future.

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