Pi Network stands at the forefront of the cryptocurrency revolution, not only for its unique approach to mobile mining or its massive community, but also for its deep commitment to creating practical utilities within its ecosystem.
The network pioneered expanding universal access to cryptocurrency with a simple, yet powerful, unconventional invention of mobile mining. What followed is a growing community of over 47 million engaged members. Along with accessibility, utility is another cornerstone purpose of the network. Accessibility answers the question, “How can people around the world irrespective of their economic circumstances and knowledge barriers gain access to the cryptocurrency revolution by actually owning it?” Utility answers the question, “How can cryptocurrency actually make a positive change in the lives of everyday people?” Or “What can cryptocurrency be used for in addition to trading and financial purposes?”
The network has created several forms of utilities. You may be familiar with the Fireside Forum app that uses Pi for decentralized content creation, curation, and moderation; the Staked DM feature in the Chat app that uses Pi for peer-to-peer connections; the wallet app used for direct payment of Pi for goods and services locally; the KYC app that uses Pi to crowdsource essential validation work in the community; or with many of the apps created by Pi community developers with compelling use cases for the Pi cryptocurrency (see, for example, our past Hackathon announcements such as 1 and 2). Apps enrich our lives in many ways and create diverse utilities for the network through innovative integration of Pi cryptocurrency.
What are Platform-level Utilities?
Apps are, however, not the only source of utilities creation. There is substantial scope for creating utilities at the level of the Pi platform as well. This scope hinges on some of the unique collective resources of this cryptocurrency network, including but not limited to the following:
- The size and engagement of our community
- Our collective attention
- Our verified digital identity
- Our large distributed network of computer nodes
At a given point in time, there will be one person or another engaging in one activity or another on the platform. The diversity of these activities has the potential to create diverse utilities for the Pi cryptocurrency. However, if we take stock of our collective resources (i.e., our presence and activities as a whole), how can we translate them into network-wide utilities of Pi that every Pioneer holds?
This question is key for the creation of utilities on the platform level. On each of the collective resources that the Pi community possesses, it is possible to design and create the utility of Pi. For example, Pi cryptocurrency can be potentially used to access the abundant attention resource of a massive, engaged community in a diverse ecosystem, or to plug services that involve ownership or require human authenticity into a large crypto-enabled, KYC’ed network of humans worldwide—which will especially be a common need in a future world where AI is pervasive—or to deploy software products that require huge, reliable computing power of a distributed system, etc. Pi’s collective resources listed above lend themselves to utility creation on a platform level that will ultimately benefit all Pioneers, because such true utilities will seek to address real human and evolving societal and technological needs and will create organic demand for Pi that every Pioneer holds.
The platform-level utility of Pi is what the Core Team has been envisioning, researching, designing and building, in addition to the app-level utility creation through the various Core Team apps or enabling community developers to build apps.
An Early Instantiation of Platform-level Utility on Pi
The Roadmap v2 released in December 2023 lists under the Developer Platform and Tools section a stealth project about a utility feature on the platform level, undertaken by the Pi Core Team, currently being designed and tested in stealth mode. This project is an early instantiation designed to leverage some of the collective network resources following the theories and directions on utility creation explained in this announcement. It has the potential to enhance the overall utility of the Pi cryptocurrency, as well as facilitate the sustainability of Pi Apps in our ecosystem.
Stay Tuned
We will be back with further information to unveil the specifics of this project in the near future. Until then, happy mining, and a heartful shoutout to all in the community to help propel us to Open Network by meeting our KYC and utility goals.
Edit: On March 8, 2024, the network released the first prototype of one such implementation of a platform-level utility—the Pi Ad Network—where advertisers ultimately need to acquire and use Pi to place ads in the Pi ecosystem and Pi Apps on the Pi Browser.
