Pi Day, celebrated on March 14th, was a community-wide success. But Pi Network’s progress can’t be limited to just one day. Today, June 28th, is Pi2Day and we celebrate the concept of “doubling” that remarkable day––moving from 3.14 to 6.28––to acknowledge the growth, excitement and momentum Pi Network is achieving with its community for the future.
We’re proud of our network, which has continued to grow to over 47 million Engaged Pioneers distributed all over the world. Today, we’re sharing all the ways we’ve doubled down efforts to bring us closer to achieving our Enclosed Mainnet goals and made developments that empower Pioneers to create ecosystem utility.
Taking on the Pi2Day Challenge
As Pi continues to scale, we remain committed to bringing real utilities to Pioneers and the broader Web3 community.
To further that goal, Pi Network is hosting a first-ever Utility Challenge. All Pioneers will have the opportunity to complete a list of 11 actions that are aimed at incentivizing interactions with recent apps and new features that foster utility creation and ecosystem building, and participating in community programs to create ecosystem utility opportunities. As you complete certain actions, you will unlock Pi-themed digital swag while exploring new and cool things the Pi ecosystem has to offer.
Those who complete all 11 actions will enter a raffle to win a limited-edition Pi2Day t-shirt among other meaningful awards. Want to get started? Your Utility Challenge Action List should now be available on the mining app home screen for all Pioneers to start today. Click here for more details on how to participate and how it works!
The 2023 Pi2Day Art Festival is also being held on Fireside Forum in conjunction with the Utility Challenge, so be prepared to participate in PiArt activities throughout the Challenge.
Pi Network Progress
Pi Network has made significant progress since our last major update on Pi Day 2023, as we’ve combined our decentralized efforts with the passion of our community to drive the network forward. Pi Network and Pi Ecosystem have grown tremendously, with various new tools, features, apps and community programs.
And there’s still so much more to celebrate!
Since Pi Day, the Core Team has been working on new initiatives across the Pi Network ecosystem, including more advanced version of Developer Wallets and Pi Developer Chats to better facilitate the creation of utilities, a novel Developer Ambassador Program to mobilize the Pi community to bring more projects to the network, scalable continuous hackathons to provide constant opportunities for new app creation, and even a PiNet initiative that allows Pioneers and the larger Web3 community to view the Pi Ecosystem without the confinement of Pi Browser and bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3.
That’s a lot to read––but it’s even more to accomplish. And we’re proud of every step we’ve taken to make Pi better for our community.
Together, these initiatives build on Pi Network’s core emphasis on utility, bringing in new creators and users alike to encourage progress. And that’s not even mentioning the new Fireside Forum, Pi Network’s newest initiative to establish a decentralized, collaborative, and human-centered social media environment on Web3.
Let’s take a deeper dive into all the new features and share what we’ve been working on between Pi Day and Pi2Day.
Product & Tech – Q2 Updates and Releases
PiNet Bridges The Gap Between Web2 and Web3
We’re proud to announce PiNet—Pi Apps on the Open InterNet—as a new product within the Pi Apps platform. With PiNet, anyone can browse, view, and share content from and even interact with Web3 Pi Apps on whichever browser they choose. Currently this feature only applies to a few selected Pi apps, with the intention to be made available for a lot more Pi Apps in the future.
Using a unique URL, Pi Apps and their specific screens and pages found on the Pi Browser will be accessible by the world outside of the Pi Ecosystem via any other conventional internet browsers, such as Chrome, Safari and Firefox. This product improves accessibility to the Pi ecosystem for Pioneers and non-Pioneers alike as we connect Pi to the Web2 world.
With PiNet, our utilities and network won’t just be limited to our community of over 47 million engaged members. Soon, for the first time, we’ll have the ability to reach billions of Web2 users and directly show them what Pi and Web3 have to offer. Pi Community Developers with eligible apps who want to feature their Pi apps to a global audience can register for PiNet within the Developer Portal on the Pi Browser. To be eligible, an application must first be listed within the Ecosystem UI on the Pi Browser. Once registered, Developers only need to implement PiNet in their apps to receive their shareable Pinet URL with the world.
Fireside Forum: A New Vision of Web3
Earlier this quarter, we launched the latest innovative Pi app by the Core Team: Fireside Forum, a true Web3 social platform that fosters authenticity, constructive conversations, and healthier online social interactions by integrating tokenomics into the core of social interactions.
With Fireside Forum, millions of Pioneers worldwide can connect and interact in a responsive and human-led environment with a novel tokenomics system designed to both reward positive interactions and curb negative actions. This mechanism, powered by Pi cryptocurrency, allows Pioneers to organically curate content and moderate behavior, providing our community the tools to manage the environment in a decentralized way.
Fireside Forum is just one of the early instantiations of Pi Network’s innovations based on blockchain technology and our hypotheses about what the next generation of online social interactions can be, and will be consistently iterated based on usage data to improve and make progress towards its design goals.
On this Pi2Day, for the first time, Fireside Forum will enable image posting for limited channels. To celebrate, we’re hosting the entire Pi Art Festival on Fireside Forum, in a dedicated channel where Pioneers can share their art for the community to enjoy, engage with, and support! Check out the #PiArt channel on PiNet or the Pi Browser app, and explore the social app.
Pi Chat Migration and Design Refresh
In this quarter, we also successfully updated the Pi Chats infrastructure and design. This change now enables the Pi Chat app to have more frequent development of new features and independent scaling—something important for ecosystem development and utility creation.
This migration empowers chats to improve in the future and even today––not just for new features but for new developer features and the Pi integration in the future.
Alongside this, we’ve also introduced a fresh look and style to Chats. We hope you enjoy the changes and continue interacting with the community!
KYC Open to All Continues
Overall, the Pi KYC Solution continues to iterate and improve, further processing millions of Pioneers since the launch of open-for-all KYC on Pi Day. Pi Network now has 5.6 million Pioneers who’ve passed KYC. Pioneers are empowered to further improve the network’s KYC progress through a variety of ways as described below:
- Pass KYC and set yourself up for migration: Make sure you are ready to go to Mainnet yourself. With the new KYC release on Pi Day, 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. 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, if you are able to, finish those items and migrate.
- 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, and receive Pi for your good work!
- Invite your Pi friends to KYC: For the massive network to go through KYC and migrate to Mainnet, individual Pioneers can help by notifying and mobilizing their Referral Teams, Security Circles or any Pioneers they know to start and complete their own KYC and migration process. To do so, tap “Notify Team to KYC and Migrate” in your Mainnet dashboard, available under the menu on the main Pi app.The sooner more Pioneers get onboarded to the Mainnet, the closer we approach the Open Network.
As we continue to review and improve the underlying processes, actualizing KYC opportunities for more and more Pioneers, we’re grateful for the support and commitment of the community, even amidst the delays and understandable frustrations of individual Pioneers inherent in such an ambitious undertaking. We hear your voice, and are committed to ensuring that every eligible Pioneer receives the support to pass KYC. For more information on Pi KYC, check out the “KYC FAQs” and the “What is Pi Network KYC” blogs we released earlier this quarter.
Product & Tech – Coming Soon
In addition to the newest releases in this quarter, the Core Team has also been working on a few other major features that are important for ecosystem building and utility creation. Below is a preview for a few important features that we’re excited to release to the community upon completion.
Secure Multisig Wallets for Mainnet Apps
Multisig (or multi-signature) wallets for Mainnet Pi Apps are set to be released soon, offering developers the ability to enhance the security of the Pi received and held by their apps.
Each Pi App will be able to maintain two wallets on Mainnet.
- A multisig wallet for Receiving Pi from Pioneers – Analogy: savings account for safekeeping (with higher balance)
- A standard wallet for Sending Pi to Pioneers – Analogy: checking/current account for payments (with lower balance)
Developers will utilize the Receiving Wallet to gather Pi from their app users through Pioneer-to-App payments. This multisig wallet is designed to safeguard their significant Pi share not needed for daily transactions back to users. To boost security and potentially aid collective team governance, multiple individuals’ signatures can be required for a transaction before any Pi in the Receiving Wallet is dispatched. Adding an extra layer of security, this is conceived as a “cold” (offline) wallet, meaning developers never need to input any associated passphrase online to their app servers. As a result, even if their servers are compromised, intruders won’t gain access to the app’s main Pi reserves.
Considering that the significant portion of an app’s Pi reserves is held in a multisig, cold wallet (which cannot be stored on a server or facilitate automated outgoing payments), and requires multiple manual signatures ideally from different individuals, developers need a separate wallet to make outgoing payments to their users.
The Sending Wallet, which is manually fed Pi from the Receiving Wallet by the developers, enables automated App-to-Pioneer payments without the need for multiple individuals to sign each transaction. This facilitates app scalability as its secret seed can reside on the application server for utilization by the application code. The multisig feature doesn’t apply here. For heightened security, developers are encouraged to limit the Sending Wallet’s Pi balance to the daily payment needs of Pioneers, regularly reassessing this amount as necessary.
Collectively, these two wallets, facilitating Pioneer-to-App and App-to-Pioneer payments, will unlock numerous features and business models for Pi app developers! This, in turn, helps the network develop diverse use cases for the Pi cryptocurrency. Look out for forthcoming instructions on applying for and setting up these developer wallets.
Pi Integration on #PiChats
Since its release, #PiChats has been enabling Pioneers to engage with other members of the community through shared channels and topics and has served as the backbone of community communications while offering open-door access to members of the Core Team and Community Moderators. Now that Pi Chats’ infrastructure has been successfully updated, the next step is integrating Pi into Chats to create utility of Pi on access and connections with an intriguing twist to traditional messaging platforms—another innovative Web3 design in the social space (as compared to Fireside Forum that is an innovative Web3 design for utility on social interactions). This new chat feature that is currently worked on and will soon be released also serves as the foundation for another important interoperable feature across Pi Ecosystem. Details will follow in a later announcement.
Developer Channels in #PiChats
The introduction of developer chat rooms for Pi Network community apps marks an important milestone in fostering a thriving, empowered, and connected developer community.
We’re proud to be announcing that Pi app developers can soon apply for opening and running their own app-specific chat rooms inside the Pi Chats. Eligible developers can create, host and moderate their own chat rooms in Pi Chats to better connect with Pioneers, creating new and decentralized communities around their products, and potentially grow their project.
For ease of use, each app-specific chat room will look and feel like a general Pi Chat Room; however the moderation of these app rooms will be executed by the App Team themselves.
This project is our first step in opening up the chat functionalities for developers to use, and later iterations can potentially make such a feature even easier to integrate. This is also another effort in giving the community developers more access to our decentralized network. Using Developer Channels as a starting point, we are also working on creating chat features for Pioneers which can be used in conjunction with this tool to facilitate applications’ messaging with Pioneers for business coordination, sales and logistics purposes within the Pi ecosystem.
Visible Unverified Mainnet Apps
As Pi Network continues to expand, so does the work, influence and opportunities for our developers. Unverified Mainnet Applications will soon be visible, alongside Testnet Apps, in a new Ecosystem UI on the Pi Browser. This Ecosystem UI, housing both Unverified Mainnet and Testnet Pi Apps, will replace the Pi Browser’s current Testnet Ecosystem UI released around Pi Day, which only lists Testnet Pi Apps. Please note that the Pi Apps listed there as available on Mainnet are still Unverified apps, so please browse and use these apps with caution. Nonetheless, this is a step forward in ecosystem building allowing visibility to Pi Apps already functional on the Mainnet. It is an intermediate step before the network gets ready to list Verified Mainnet apps, which meet higher criteria than Unverified Mainnet apps.
The Ecosystem UI is the interface to Pi apps within the Pi Browser, continuing our mission of empowering Pioneers with new utilities and opportunities. Pioneers can navigate through the Ecosystem UI, browsing sections and discovering the great work the community developers have developed. By putting developers and their work front and center, Pi can better build a meaningful Web3 environment for our Pioneers, continuing our utility-forward approach to the community.
Community developers are the foundation of the Pi ecosystem, and good apps deserve an opportunity to be featured on Pi’s platform. Identifying and selecting responsible and utility-based apps that are aligned with Pi Network’s principles and strategies is important for the health and development of the Pi ecosystem. Featuring those utilities on the Ecosystem UI on the Pi Browser is one of many proof points of Pi Network’s support for developers and our commitment to awarding and promoting excellence in app development.
Instructions on getting Unverified Mainnet Apps onto the Ecosystem UI will be available to developers in the near future.
Community Programs
Developer Ambassador Program Launch
Today on Pi2Day, we are thrilled to announce the launch of the Developer Ambassador Program for all Pioneers to contribute to and get rewarded for the continued ecosystem development. This program was previewed on our PiDay announcement. We have now completed designing the program and reward structure, implemented this program in the Pi app and are releasing it as a pilot today. More resources and tools for Developer Ambassadors to help educate and onboard third-party developers will be released in the near future and over the course of the program.
The Developer Ambassador program is truly accessible in that it does not require anyone to know how to code or build software. It is here for everyone in our community to be proactive in identifying, engaging, convincing and enabling developers in their personal and professional networks to build new Pi apps (or repurpose existing apps into Pi apps). As the new developers join Pi and deploy an Unverified Mainnet app listed on the Pi Ecosystem UI of the Pi Browser, the Developer Ambassador will receive 1000 Pi.
Specifically, in this Pilot program starting June 28, 2023, Developer Ambassadors have until September 30, 2023 to invite developers and have them create and list an Unverified Mainnet app on the Ecosystem UI on the Pi Browser (more details in the succeeding paragraph below). In the Developer Ambassador interface, located under the “Roles” tab in the menu of the main Pi app, Developer Ambassadors will be able to invite new developers and view the developers they onboarded, as well as check in on the developers’ app progress. This enables Developer Ambassadors to offer timely guidance or reminders to the developers along the way.
To help Developer Ambassadors, we will continue to provide the information and templates that can be used and re-used to bring more developers onto the Pi platform. Any new developer can simply enter the Ambassador’s referral code (the same one used to invite new Pioneers to join), which will lock in the Ambassador’s rewards for bringing in the given developer, if they end up building a Pi app successfully. When the developer’s unverified Mainnet app meets the standards and criteria to be listed as an unverified app on the Ecosystem UI in the Pi Browser, and is successfully listed, the Developer Ambassador will receive 1000 Pi after 30 days of the app’s continuous listing!
Pi Network’s Developer Ambassador Program empowers any Pioneer to contribute to Ecosystem building, no matter their skillset or background. Any Pioneer can become a Developer Ambassador – just check your network or community for developers and projects you think would be a fit for Pi and its large 47+ million strong community, and reach out!.
#PiHackathon and Brainstorm
Building on the momentum of Pi’s 2023 Q1 Hackathon, which saw thousands of participants, hundreds of app submissions, and nine outstanding winning teams, Pi Network also announced another program intended for new app and utility creation—a new ongoing #PiHackathon program which started at the beginning of June.
The #PiHackathon is designed to support year-round Pi development efforts, with the process repeating each month, and each winning team receiving a prize of 10,000 Pi. Passionate developers and community leaders alike now have an always-on opportunity to submit the apps and utilities they are building on Pi. We’ll also be sending out updates and reminders about Hackathon participation, so stay tuned for more.
Significant technical support was also provided to ensure a clear and user-friendly experience for developers through the Brainstorm app. With the addition of a dedicated “Hackathon” tab on the app’s menu, developers will be able to find resources, instructions, and general information needed to streamline their hackathon participation experience.
As part of our expanding development resources, the #PiHackathon, with the help of the Brainstorm app, is an exciting step forward in growing the Pi ecosystem and building utility—an essential requirement of the Enclosed Mainnet. All Pioneers can participate in the #PiHackathon; if you are not a developer yourself, you can still voice your opinion and contribute by reviewing and rating submissions through the Brainstorm app.
Learn more about how to join here.
Conclusion
This Pi2Day celebration marks a pivotal moment in the Pi Network journey, showcasing the collective effort and commitment of our community. As we commemorate this milestone, we recognize the progress made in building utility and laying the foundation for a decentralized future. Together, we are better poised than ever to redefine the Web3 landscape.
This Pi2Day celebration is also a call to action: we’re rallying everyone to join the movement and shape the future of the digital space. Together, we will embrace collective participation and innovation as we pave the way for a decentralized future. Let’s celebrate and acknowledge the hard work from all Pioneers that has brought us here.
With commitment and determination, we will continue on this journey, unlocking the transformative potential of Pi Network. Join us in celebrating Pi2Day and together, let us shape the future—one step at a time.