To celebrate the first anniversary of Open Network, Pi Founders Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan answered a series of questions to offer Pioneers more insight into Pi’s strategy, approach, and current work since Open Network—while also providing greater visibility into the direction and priorities guiding Pi’s continued development. Watch the full video below, which explores these topics in depth!
Transcript
Nicolas Kokkalis
Hey Pioneers, I’m Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis
Chengdiao Fan
And I’m Dr. Chengdiao Fan
Nicolas Kokkalis
And today we’re excited to celebrate with the community the one-year anniversary of Pi’s Open Network launch.
Chengdiao Fan
Open Network, which was officially launched on February 20, 2025, was a pivotal point in Pi’s history, connecting Pi’s blockchain, identity-verified community and Web3 ecosystem with the external world. As many Pioneers know, the Pi community collectively put in an incredible amount of work and contributions to build out the ecosystem over six years to ensure Pi’s readiness and sustainable utility in the Open Network phase.
Nicolas Kokkalis
Since the Open Network launch, Pi’s journey has continued to make progress in line with Pi’s long term vision and strategy—to create an inclusive, utility-driven, and widely adopted cryptocurrency that is broadly accessible.
This approach—the focus on utility, mass adoption, and user experience—is essential for any blockchain’s success and differentiates Pi from the broader blockchain industry.
Over the past year alone, there have been incredible advances in Pi’s ecosystem activity, app development initiatives and tools, and innovative product and platform-level utility releases. A few highlights include the AI-assisted Pi App Studio tool, the Pi Network Ventures initiative to invest in innovative startups and businesses, DEX/AMM and token creation features, and much more.
Chengdiao Fan
In the year to come, Pi will focus on expanding apps and utility creation opportunities, aligning Web3 tools with innovation creation, solving fundamental problems such as digital identity for crypto’s integration into the real world, interoperability, improving user experience, and enabling more meaningful participation across the ecosystem. Pi is improving the tools and experiences that make it easier for developers, businesses, and Pioneers to build, participate, and create, all while expanding the utility of Pi. This is how Pi continues to turn its long-term vision into lived reality, and the realization of the true promise of blockchain and Web3.
Now, let’s dive deeper. Nicolas and I will answer a series of questions that further explore Pi’s strategy and approach since Open Network and moving forward, and will give the Pioneer community more insight into what is being done.
Why does Pi feel so different from other blockchains? Why does utility matter?
Chengdiao Fan
Pi feels different from other blockchains because Pi is different. When Open Network launched a year ago, I described Pi as nonconformist, and that still holds. Pi differentiates itself in several fundamental ways: Pi never did an ICO, Pi is free to mine for accessibility, it’s mobile-first, Pi’s Mainnet blockchain is fully KYC’d, Pi has tens of millions of verified users globally, and from the very beginning, Pi has emphasized utility.
In the broader crypto industry, with thousands of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, trading inevitably is a major focus. Trading mechanisms themselves—DeFi, liquidity, market infrastructure—are important areas of innovation. But beyond how trading happens, there’s a more fundamental question: what are people actually trading?
The problem Pi set out to solve is not just whether trading is possible, or how efficiently it can occur, but the much harder problem of what should be traded. If it were only about enabling trading, you could issue a large number of fake or meaningless tokens—just like many we see even on Testnets—and trading could start immediately. Volumes could be high as long as people participate. But if those tokens don’t map to anything real, what’s the point?
The hard problem is figuring out how tokens can be used in real world applications, in commerce involving real goods and services, or how they can be used to participate meaningfully in business and production processes. That’s where utility comes in.
Historically, Pi has emphasized using Pi for real goods and services— in local commerce and across Pi apps in the Pi Browser, from e-commerce and games to social and educational applications. Whether it’s Pi itself or ecosystem tokens built on Pi, utility tokens need to be embedded into specific products and real usage flows, not just abstract financial mechanisms.
Utility also connects with Pi’s focus on KYC identity verification. Pi’s fully KYC’d network was fundamental in preparing the blockchain for real-world assets and production processes.
People sometimes ask why Pi hackathon winning apps look so different from typical crypto projects—like dating apps or e-commerce platforms instead of purely DeFi products. That difference is intentional. Pi prioritizes applications that solve real-world problems and fulfill real-world needs, not just creations in financial mechanics. DeFi mechanisms matter only if there is real utility and production involved. It’s easy to enable fast, high-volume trading. It’s much harder to enable tokens to be used inside real products that support real-world innovation and economic activity.
But that harder path is worth taking. We believe that only by persistently trying to solve this complex and challenging problem—how blockchain and crypto mechanisms can actually be used to facilitate real-world production—can Web3 achieve meaningful breakthroughs. This path may take more time, more grit, and it may appear different. But this is the path Pi has chosen from day one, and it’s a path the broader crypto industry will eventually need to take to overcome its own challenges.
This philosophy goes all the way back to Pi’s original design. Pi was designed to be freely accessible, allowing anyone to mine without financial barriers or out-of-pocket costs. That design not only permitted wide distribution and inclusivity, but it also enabled the network and all participants in the network to afford the patience to engage in the difficult work necessary to establish a fully functional ecosystem predicated on utility. There are already many cryptocurrencies taking the other path, why not try this path with Pi for free?
What is the network working on now?
Nicolas Kokkalis
Well, of course, the network will continue the general work that matters to Pioneers such as KYC and Migration, and to developers such as improving and expanding the tools that enable them to build easier on Pi, and various initiatives that are intended to facilitate more utility on Pi.
KYC and migration remain a top priority. We’re increasing KYC throughput, unblocking more users, increasing speed through further AI integration in the KYC process, and continuing migrations and enabling second migrations so more Pioneers can fully participate in the Mainnet ecosystem. We are also on track to roll out KYC validator rewards this quarter in a secure and scalable way.
In terms of Developer tools and support, we’re supporting developers, lowering the barrier to building on Pi through improved tooling and simpler integrations, including new tools like much faster Pi payment setups, along with ongoing support to help developers launch and scale real utilities.
AI and utility creation is also important. We’re expanding the App Studio with broader access, new payments integrations, and deeper AI capabilities to help apps move from idea to production faster.
At the network level, we’re continuing work on Nodes, protocol upgrades, and components like DEX functionality and liquidity pools—all to support real, usable applications and activities on Pi.
Pi Network Ventures continues to invest in startups and businesses across stages and industries, with the focus of advancing the real-world utility and production on Pi Network.
Finally, Pi Network remains committed to supporting and fostering a strong community through events like Pi Day, hackathons, local commerce, and more, and through ongoing education and communication on Pi’s approach, products, features, milestones and ecosystem.
What are Pi ecosystem tokens and what is the design thinking for ecosystem tokens on Mainnet?
Chengdiao Fan
Pi Ecosystem tokens are tokens created by the community and issued on Pi. As many of you know, ecosystem tokens have already been released on Testnet, and we are finalizing their implementation on Mainnet. While technology and product are obviously important, we believe the most critical factor on Mainnet will be their design.
As I mentioned in my recent Token2049 talk, the ability to issue tokens is an important superpower of Web3, but a core issue in the broader crypto space is the misalignment between token design and real innovation. Tokens on most other crypto networks function primarily as tools to raise capital. Yet, despite this approach, most of those projects frequently fail to provide meaningful utility and innovation. We see this as a structural problem.
But what’s the solution? What else can tokens actually be used for from the perspective of a business? And if startup and business founders cannot use tokens primarily for raising capital, why would they issue and operate a token at all—given the effort it takes to do so?
This is where Pi is uniquely positioned to provide a different answer.
Pi’s approach is to integrate crypto tokens directly into the evolutionary process for products and innovations.
Pi strongly encourages and emphasizes focus on utility because utility enables the long term stability, sustainability, and success for any blockchain project. Pi itself is a utility token, and ecosystem tokens on Pi are likewise encouraged to be focused on and used for utility. While many types of tokens can be issued on a blockchain, Pi’s current launch programs intentionally encourage a completely new design construct based on Pi’s existing resources and infrastructure—utility tokens designed for user acquisition.
Tokens for user acquisition through the Pi launch programs mean that projects issue tokens to fulfill the need to acquire users for their products, and integrate these tokens for utility-based use cases inside their products; users get to access these tokens through the launch programs and are then able to use the tokens in the products; Pi is staked and used in the the above mechanisms to orchestrate and facilitate the process.
Pi has millions of users around the world, including not only crypto-native users, but more importantly mainstream audiences, many of whom are already identity-verified. For product builders and businesses, high-quality users and global reach are some of the most valuable resources that are essential to a product’s success.
Pi’s goal is to design ecosystem tokens as powerful tools that allow startups and businesses to acquire users, including from Pi Network—with user consent, and facilitate the growth of their businesses. Early-stage user acquisition is typically very expensive for startups. By using Web3 tools like the Pi ecosystem tokens, startups can reduce the cost of user acquisition, while also involving users directly in their projects to obtain feedback, test product attributes and functions, and validate the use of their product to address real human needs.
Acquired users also help to hold businesses accountable for the services they provide on an ongoing basis—if their product does not maintain utility, quality and engagement, users may end up leaving their products. Organic user acquisition and retention are natural mechanisms by which projects are encouraged to create and provide useful services, which is in line with the original intent—real products with innovation.
On the other hand, from the users’ perspective, they will have their free choice to join and use different products like they always do in Web2, with the difference that they can access the utility token issued by the projects through the Pi launch programs, DEX and AMM, and use these tokens in the project’s products.
In this way, we believe this design can better align the unique capabilities of Web3—such as token issuance—with support for innovative products. Pi Ecosystem tokens are not about copying existing token models. In fact, we deliberately have sought to avoid the traditional approach, because many of the problems in Web3 stem from how tokens have traditionally been designed. And this design will also evolve as it gets iterated in practice.
An equally important difference lies in the types of projects encouraged to launch on Pi. Instead of focusing on token issuers whose primary intent is to issue a token and then try to build a business around it—Pi wants to prioritize businesses with real products who start with a genuine problem to solve, and then can use a token as a tool to help them do that better and grow their products.
Of course, ecosystem tokens also involve technical considerations such as interoperability and standard crypto integrations, for which Pi draws on the work and innovations of the general crypto space.
Pi’s focus is not on tokens for their own sake, or on mechanisms and integrations in isolation, but on enabling useful, utility-driven tokens and supporting the real innovation behind them. From there, Pi platform designs the tools, enables the integrations, and supports the infrastructure that these products actually need to succeed and grow.
What is the significance of Pi KYC, and what’s next?
Nicolas Kokkalis
As Pioneers know, our community has spent years collectively building Pi’s KYC solution—from the underlying technology and product design, to bootstrapping a global network of human validators—from building validator workflows across many regions of the world to producing designs preserving user privacy. Because Pioneers are distributed globally, the Pi KYC solution had to achieve broad geographic coverage and scalability. And beyond standard identity verification, the Pi KYC solution also integrates sanction screening and compliance checks into a single system.
There were several reasons we chose to invest so heavily in KYC. From Pi Network’s perspective, it is foundational to the integrity and authenticity of the network. We also wanted to mitigate the need for Pioneers to pay out of pocket in order to verify their identity and thereby ensure accessibility for the entire community. From a web-utility and industry perspective, we see KYC as a critical unsolved problem in Web3 and an essential step before the mass adoption of blockchain technology. These considerations drove us to build KYC in-house rather than outsourcing it.
But KYC is not just something Pi needs internally. The next stage of this initiative is treating KYC itself as a service—KYC as a platform capability.
Identity is fundamental to any meaningful integration with the real-world economy. Any transfers of value, ownership, and changes in ownership inevitably raise the question of “who are the participants?” That is fundamentally an identity—and therefore a KYC—problem.
In the near term, and as an evolution of what we have already developed, we will offer the technology and product of KYC, importantly not the data, as a service to other projects, be it Web3 or traditional businesses. This means providing APIs that allow external services to use the Pi KYC solution at scale. While KYC providers already exist, Pi’s approach is distinctive in several ways: our global geographic coverage; scalability; our hybrid model combining AI and human verification; and the completeness of the solution—where Pi KYC addresses not just identity verification but also sanction checks for compliance, human validator workflows, cross-network comparisons, and support for different regulatory formats. We are also integrating additional modalities, such as palm-print verification, to further strengthen matching and authentication, accommodating the aptitude of the industry in regards to identity verification.
Looking longer term now, the fact that Pi Network itself is KYC’d becomes a powerful network-level collective resource. Users retain control over their own identity and data, but they also gain the option to participate in applications built on top of an identity-verified network. That network, in turn, provides utility to external services that need trustworthy human identity verification.
This matters well beyond Pi. Solving KYC is a prerequisite for many major challenges in Web3, including real-world assets. More broadly, in an AI-driven world filled with bots and agents that can increasingly mimic human behavior, the ability to answer a simple but critical question—who is real—becomes essential.
To date, we’ve already KYC’d tens of millions of Pioneers. And by opening KYC as a service to other networks and applications, it also becomes an important gateway to allow for the onboarding of non-Pi users into the Pi ecosystem.
Why is Pi focusing on AI? What does AI have to do with blockchain?
Chengdiao Fan
AI is fundamentally changing how value and production are created in the world. This shift inevitably introduces new challenges for humanity. As AI increasingly drives production, traditional labor is no longer a reliable basis for how wealth is distributed. This raises a critical question: how do we ensure that the value created by AI is distributed in a way that actually improves overall quality of life for everyone, rather than becoming even more concentrated among those who already control capital?
This is a core problem Pi intends to address. Pi sees the ultimate utility of blockchain technology as an auditable and scalable mechanism for societal distribution and redistribution. Over the past several years, Pi has built a widely distributed network as the foundation for that goal. But having a distributed network alone is not enough. To realize this ultimate utility, real production—both existing and new—must be brought on-chain.
Doing so presents significant challenges. For existing forms of production, one of the biggest obstacles is identity: verified identity and verified ownership. These are prerequisites for large-scale, real-world production to move on-chain. Pi Network has invested heavily in solving this problem through its KYC solution, which enables identity verification at global scale and provides a foundation for trusted participation in on-chain economic activity.
When it comes to new production, the picture is even clearer. The next generation of applications will almost certainly be either AI-powered or AI-native. Yet the AI application layer is still in its early stages. Today, most user interaction with AI remains centered around chatbots, even though the AI industry is actively experimenting with richer applications—new forms of social networks, productivity tools, and AI-assisted workflows.
In the short to mid term, Pi’s focus, at the intersection of AI and blockchain, is therefore the AI application layer. Pi App Studio uses AI to empower app creation; simpler developer libraries and tools which are meant to enable easy integration by third-party AI builders to build on top of Pi. On the strategy level, Pi has combined bottom-up and top-down approaches. Bottom-up efforts—like App Studio—enable large numbers of applications to be created, even though the signal-to-noise ratio can be high. That is expected and acceptable. At the same time, Pi complements this with a more top-down, high-signal strategy through Pi Network Ventures, which invests in carefully vetted teams each year and works with them in a more high-touch way.
Between these two strategies are initiatives in the middle such as hackathons and developer programs, which combine grassroots efforts with more structured guidance. Together, these strategies have sought to bootstrap, foster, and scale a vibrant ecosystem of AI-powered applications on Pi.
Looking further ahead, Pi’s involvement with AI extends into AI infrastructure itself. This includes distributed computing for AI training, inference, and reinforcement learning. Pi is uniquely positioned here because it already has a large network of computing nodes—over 350,000—and a global network of identity-verified human participants who could opt in to provide authentic human input for AI training, labeling, and reinforcement learning, in exchange for compensation in cryptocurrencies by third-party clients.
Distributed AI training is still at the research stage in the world. Distributed AI learning aligns naturally with a distributed network, and it may also help address some of the limitations of centralized training—such as data center constraints, energy concentration, and issues like catastrophic forgetting or global-state bottlenecks. While significant challenges remain, these are precisely the kinds of problems that require sustained research and long-term commitment to solve. We are actively exploring why and how a paradigm shift from fully centralized AI training to more distributed approaches could be feasible and efficient. Turning this into a meaningful contribution to AI infrastructure requires much deeper research.
Human participation is also a critical component. Pi’s network of verified humans offers a unique resource for scalable, authentic human input in AI systems, with compensation handled natively through blockchain-based payments. Together, these elements—distributed computing, verified human input, and blockchain-based coordination—provide new approaches to AI learning and infrastructure.
Trying to solve the world’s hard problems is a long-term endeavor for anyone in the world. It means starting early is even more crucial, because anything truly defensible takes time to build, be it technology or network effect. For example, what Pi Network has achieved that provides strategic advantages and defensibility are Pi’s KYC system, its scale, networks of millions of identity verified human beings, hundreds of thousands of computer nodes, and attention and engagement of the community in tens of millions, and they did not emerge overnight. Rather, they took years to build and efforts of the whole Pi community. Similarly, contributing meaningfully to AI infrastructure through distributed systems is extremely difficult, which is precisely why it must be explored early and persistently for a long haul.
