Pi Day 2023 – All hands on deck!

These initiatives, along with many other improvements for the Pi ecosystem and infrastructure, have helped contribute to the great productivity and progress we have had this past year. Our network has continued to grow and reached over 45 million Engaged Pioneers distributed all over the world, despite the recent unfavorable news and the difficulties of the crypto and blockchain industry as a whole. Together, the Core Team and Pioneers have communicated and executed on our shared priorities to build a project that reflects our common goals of a more fair, distributed network built on Pi. But there’s still much work to do!

Moving forward, we’re emphasizing what Pi Network—the Core Team, Pioneers, and community developers alike—can do together to reach the primary goals of the Enclosed Network:

1. Mass verification of millions of Pioneers’ identity via a native, scalable KYC solution, followed by the migration of their mobile mining balance to the Pi Mainnet

2. Creation of real utilities for the Pi cryptocurrency through the Pi ecosystem

The Enclosed Network goals are prerequisites for us to reach Open Network, as explained in the 2021 December Whitepaper. Achieving the Enclosed Network goals relies on all members of the Pi community. 

This Pi Day announcement is not only meant to be informative but also to inspire more collective efforts. In addition to the accomplishments we’ve all made and exciting news we’re sharing, you will find specific guidance on how Pioneers can make more diverse decentralized efforts to contribute to Pi Network and help it achieve its Enclosed Network goals faster— in the theme of “What I do for Pi”.

What the Core Team is doing

The backbone of Pi is its Pioneers. To empower those tens of millions of engaged, distributed individuals, the Core Team has been building, guiding and aligning the network components necessary for Pioneers to grow, collaborate, unleash their potential, use their talents, and diversely contribute to the shared vision of Pi. The core mining mechanism of Pi speaks to the essence of this meritocratic process of the massive Pi community’s collective efforts and the true meaning of decentralization—decentralized efforts paired with widely distributed rewards. 

In the current Enclosed Network period, the Core Team has continued to build out infrastructure and necessary features to enable Pioneers to achieve the two goals. In addition to the achievements listed above over the past year, we’re announcing today some exciting new releases that will further empower the community. 

Today’s announcement will only include the major new or recent releases. More detailed Product and Tech updates on what the Core Team has been working on for the last 3 months will be provided around the end of this quarter. 

KYC for all! 

While the network has already been providing mass KYC because the majority of the network was eligible to apply for KYC anytime they wanted, we’re making the KYC application open for all Pioneers! 

Many of the newly KYC-enabled accounts will be able to apply to KYC through the Tentative KYC program. This means that, unlike the regular KYC process, Tentative KYC applications will go through additional checks after they’ve submitted documents and passed reviews by Validators before receiving the “passed” status. Such additional checks will combine the newly submitted information to further verify their identity. The Tentative KYC program gives accounts with more complex properties a chance to proceed with KYC and provide proof of their identities as real humans, while exercising caution in granting “passed” status.  

The reason for such an eligibility rollout to KYC and the selective Tentative KYC program is to ensure the integrity of the network—cautiously allowing as many real human Pioneers as possible to pass KYC, while catching and preventing as many fake and bot accounts as possible. Not only is this important for the network, but it’s also fair for all human Pioneers who have been honestly mining in their own accounts. 

New Testnet Ecosystem interface with Testnet apps

We’re announcing the Testnet Ecosystem, the new interface to Testnet apps in the Pi Browser. Overall, the current Testnet Ecosystem interface provides Pioneers with a preview of how the Mainnet Ecosystem might look—a central hub of selected apps/utilities with Mainnet apps criteria. 

Through the Testnet Ecosystem interface, Pioneers can explore the Pi apps in the Pi ecosystem while community developers are able to give Pioneers exposure to their Pi apps to test, and iterate to build full-fledged apps—all helping the network identify and create true utility of Pi. This feature is being deployed and will be accessible very soon. These Testnet apps will be made accessible to everyone in the Testnet Ecosystem on a contingent basis, in the sense of “allow, but remove upon violations”. 

This means that these apps are allowed in the Testnet Ecosystem by minimum initial criteria to maximize open collaboration and visibility in community utilities building, given that such apps are only connected to the Pi Testnet. However, since these apps are not carefully vetted or verified, Pioneers should use them at their own discretion with the expectation that they are still under development, and that they can be removed if violations by these apps are reported and verified. Apps available in the Testnet Ecosystem are neither ensured nor guaranteed to be accessible to Pioneers in the Mainnet Ecosystem which will adopt different selection criteria and procedure. 

On one hand, developers will be incentivized to improve the quality of apps to increase their eligibility for the Mainnet Ecosystem, and on the other hand, Pioneers will engage more and more with Ecosystem as the quality and quantity of apps increase.

Since Pi Network has been strongly emphasizing utilities creations over the past few months through various Hackathons and developer initiatives, the Testnet Ecosystem interface is a great step forward to connect Pioneers with the expanding array of useful, interesting and fun apps. Remember, these apps are for you! Use them, give feedback to app developers, help improve these apps, and hopefully, you can enjoy them or otherwise find them useful!

Notify your teams to start KYC and migration

We are rolling out a new feature which allows Pioneers to share messages to members of their Referral Teams and Security Circles to remind and encourage them to start their own KYC and migration process. This feature will promote decentralized efforts to speed up the network’s progress in KYC and migration, so we can get closer to the Open Network. 

Recent Pi Developer resources

The Core Team has made multiple improvements to Developer resources in order to further support our Enclosed Mainnet goal of Pi utilities creation. These efforts are in line with enabling the Pi Platform on the Mainnet to support developers from the general community and the most recent 2023 Q1 Hackathon with ecosystem building. 

Two important releases, App to User payments and the Developer Wallets, are live on the Pi Testnet and are available for integrating and testing within Community Apps. App to User payments  enables payment flows between app developers and members. Developer Wallets were released on Testnet, as specific wallets, for app developers to hold and utilize Pi for the apps they are developing. The Core Team along with community developers are testing these features to ensure they are secure and reliable. Once this testing is completed, these features will be made available on the Pi Mainnet soon.

Moreover, multiple other developer resources and improvements (e.g. Developer portal and Brainstorm updates) were deployed to support the overall environment and collaborative building process by community developers and Pioneers.

Ecosystem programs

The Core Team has also been working on various developers and ecosystem programs that are meant to encourage building and incentivize all Pioneers to join forces to create utilities on Pi, such as hackathons, PiOS, and developer support. More details on some of such programs will be discussed in a later section of this announcement. 

What community developers are doing

Hackathon

Many community developers have been participating in the Pi 2023 Q1 Hackathon that started in early January and concluded on March 5. Over 360 final project submissions from Pioneers around the world included a variety of strong use cases like social media apps, financial apps, marketplaces, games, news apps, ecosystem apps, and many more. All Pioneers are invited to review and provide input on these hackathon submissions in the Pi Brainstorm app.  

The Hackathon encouraged community developers to contribute to Pi Network and ecosystem growth by building mobile web apps for Pi that bring true utility to Pioneers. We are looking for creative, utility-focused apps that show the potential of the Pi developer ecosystem. Some of the resulting Pi apps will soon be accessible through the new features of the Testnet Ecosystem interface introduced above. 

The list that will soon be available in the Testnet Ecosystem will not be a complete list of all submissions in the hackathon, nor are they fully vetted. Given that many of them are from hackathons, please explore with the expectation that they may have missing functionalities or scalability issues.They will be listed for Pioneers to see what type of Pi apps our community developers are thinking about and putting into action, explore and test their functionalities and usefulness. They can also inspire other community developers to create more apps. 

The winners of the Hackathon will be announced in a different dedicated announcement after Pi Day and after incorporating Pioneers' input via the Brainstorm app. We’ll be also showcasing the Hackathon winning apps in a special Hackathon video. 

Thank you, community developers, who participated in the 2023 Hackathon.  There will be many more developer programs in the near future, and we encourage Pioneers to get inspired and submit your Pi app projects in future events!

What Pioneers can do

As exciting as all these accomplishments have been, the objective that they have been moving us toward is the most exciting of all: transitioning from Enclosed to Open Mainnet. However, this objective can only be attained when all participants—the Core Team, community developers and Pioneers—make their own respective efforts to prepare the network for its maturity and readiness for the Open Network period. 

In essence, if we want Open Network to come sooner, let’s work for it! Specifically, the network’s maturity and readiness can be prepared by targeting the two concrete Enclosed Network goals mentioned earlier: 1) KYC and Mainnet migration of the network and 2) utilities creation and ecosystem building. 

Now that all major essential infrastructure components for the KYC and ecosystem have been released and aligned, it is time for Pioneers to join forces and build towards these two Enclosed Network goals to progress towards the Open Network. Below is some concrete guidance on a few different ways Poineers can further contribute to the two goals, depending on their specific interest, skills and resources. 

For mass KYC and Mainnet Migration:

1. Pass KYC and migrate yourself. Make sure you are ready to go to Mainnet yourself. With the new KYC release, all Pioneers can submit their KYC applications. If you have not done so, submit your KYC applications now. After passing KYC, please make sure you complete the Mainnet Checklist to get migrated to the Mainnet (Follow this video). A large number of Pioneers have passed KYC, but haven’t migrated to Mainnet yet because some items on their checklist have not been completed. So, finish those items and migrate. 

2. Become a KYC validator. Once you successfully get KYC’ed and complete the checklist to migrate, contribute to allowing more Pioneers in the network to get KYC’ed and migrate by becoming a KYC validator in your country and region. The speed and throughput of a region’s progress in KYC and migration depend on the abundant availability, accuracy and responsible work by crowdsourced human validators. Join forces to speed up the KYC and migration process in your region.  

3. Invite your Pi friends to KYC. For the massive network to go through KYC and migrate to Mainnet, individual Pioneers need to notify and mobilize their Referral Teams, Security Circles or any Pioneers they know to start and complete their own KYC and migration process. You can do so through the new feature to share mobile messages from the Pi mining app, to remind them to start their own KYC and migration process. You can also use any other communication tools and platforms where you connect with other Pioneers to do the same. The sooner more Pioneers get onboarded to the Mainnet, the closer we approach the Open Network. 

For utilities building:

Develop Pi apps

If you have software engineering skills and can develop a mobile web app, follow the instructions and resources provided on the Developer page of our website to build a Pi app (with more developer resources to be added there). If you are a Pioneer with strong product vision and a clear roadmap to a Pi app that can lead to the utility of Pi, find and partner with developers in the network via Brainstorm or Chats, or outside of the network in your local environment to start building a Pi app. 

We’re looking for creative, utility-focused apps, which can include entertainment, education, social interaction, access to information, consumer utilities, or anything else you can think of. The Core Team has provided many resources for community developers and will announce more programs in the near term to facilitate building. 

Become an Ecosystem Ambassador

If you don’t know software engineering or have a product vision, you can contribute to ecosystem building by becoming an Ecosystem Ambassador through a new ecosystem program. 

Ecosystem Ambassadors are expected to proactively identify, reach out to and engage with builders in your own personal and professional networks to build Pi apps, and in return receive Pi rewards. Do you have a friend or professional contact who has the technical skills and product vision to build useful applications? Are you a part of a university network or a network of software developers, or are you aware of any developer events and conferences? You can even run your own Pi hackathon! 

Recall that Pi apps are mobile web apps that integrate the Pi SDK, and they can be built without any blockchain-specific programming language. This means, an existing app can also be easily repurposed into a Pi app—with the benefits of the awesome community that we are! If you know someone or a company that already has a consumer-facing app, you can help convince them to create a mobile web version of their app on the Pi platform.

As the apps that you help onboard to the Pi platform become successful, you will make more Pi for each such Pi app. A separate announcement later about the Ecosystem Ambassador program will include more details on how specifically the program works and the resources ambassadors can use to accomplish successful onboarding of app developers. We cannot wait for it!

Become a Local Business Ambassador

Already, many local shops and small businesses in many parts of the world are accepting Pi as a form of payments for real goods and services. The diversity of people, geographies, and goods and services Pi transactions represent is a beautiful tapestry worthy of a proud network. Local businesses are an important component to the Pi ecosystem and will make great contributions to building substance and utilities for the network. Local businesses are also where the grassroots power of the Pi community can be unleashed to have great potential and impact—something rarely seen in other networks. 

We know that many Pioneers are shop and small business owners themselves while many other Pioneers living in their local environments have abundant access to and ability to convince local small businesses to integrate Pi. Thus, we are thinking about forming a program for Pioneers to onboard local businesses into the Pi ecosystem. However, we recognize some challenges in this endeavor, such as the large offline portions of local business activities, logistics and accountability etc. Thus, we are open to community proposals and ideas in the formation phase on how the program can be designed to encourage local businesses integration to Pi while resolving the challenges. If you are knowledgeable about local businesses or enthusiastic about this direction of ecosystem building, submit your ideas via Pi support portal. Stay tuned for more updates on this program. 

To submit an idea: Navigate minepi.com/support and enter the Support Portal. Under the box “Need to raise a request? Contact us”, scroll down to select the option called “Community Proposals/Feature Requests” and then complete the form. For the question “What is your request”, please select the “Local Business Ambassador Program” option. Using this format correctly will ensure that the Core Team is able to identify and review your message.

Use Pi apps. 

Remember: Pi apps are built by and for the community. Even if you cannot build or join the above efforts, you can contribute by using the Pi apps yourself. Your usage of Pi apps provide great feedback to the Pi apps builders and the Pi ecosystem. Your genuine likes and dislikes will help developers build more useful apps that ultimately will serve you—the Pioneers. Only when the network has truly useful apps integrated with Pi can the ecosystem make progress in utilities creation, thus further preparing for the Open Network. 

Showcase what you contribute to Pi

In the spirit of building and the theme of “What I do for Pi”, if you are a proud Pioneer who has been contributing to the network or who is about to join any of the efforts mentioned above, showcase your contributions to the community by recording and sharing a video on social media (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) using the tag #WhatIDoForPi. 

The video can be a 10-second recording of you describing how you have contributed and will contribute to the growth, distribution, infrastructure, ecosystem, community and culture and more, of Pi Network. The community wants to hear about and appreciate your efforts. Here are a few examples: “I’m a proud KYC validator and participated in  XXX validations.”,  “I’ve been running a Pi Node for over XXX days.”, “I want to build a Pi app to address XXX.”, and “I want to be an Ecosystem Ambassador organizing hackathons in XXX.”

We’ll feature some inspiring stories on social media and in a Pi video in the near future. Note: All submissions are considered “User Content” subject to the Terms of Service. 

Thanks to all Pioneers for another great year of Pi Network. This coming year will depend on everyone in the Pi community, and we’re looking forward to what we can build together.