Crypto Art

Seven Years In: What Does Pi Network Actually Have to Show? Pi Network has just announced its first Ecosystem Summit, set for November 17 to 19, promising new platform features, developer demos, app showcases and a new hackathon. So, what has Pi built in more than seven years? Where Pi stands today Pi launched on March 14, 2019, built around the idea of mining on a phone. Over the years it added KYC verification, a closed Mainnet period, and finally an Open Network in February 2025. It has since announced a venture fund, an App Studio for developers, and a series of node protocol upgrades. Now comes the Summit. Beyond announcements, the numbers Pi itself points to are 60M+ Engaged Pioneers, 300+ Mainnet apps, 420K+ nodes and 18.1M+ KYC-verified users. Most of these figures have barely moved for months. That is the sum of what Pi presents after more than seven years. What seven years looked like for others Bitcoin (2009): By 2016 it traded on exchanges worldwide, thousands of merchants accepted it, and it had survived its first major crises. Today it is a globally recognized asset held by funds, public companies and ETFs. Apple (1976): By 1983 it had sold the Apple II in huge numbers, gone public and joined the Fortune 500. Today it is one of the most valuable companies on Earth. iPhone (2007): By 2014 hundreds of millions of units were sold and the App Store had reshaped how the world uses software. Today billions of iPhones have shipped. Google (1998): By 2005 it dominated search, had gone public, and was shipping Gmail and Maps. Today it runs the world’s default search engine and Android. Facebook (2004): By 2011 it had roughly 800 million users and billions in revenue. Today it reaches over 3 billion people monthly. YouTube (2005): By 2012 it was approaching a billion monthly viewers. Today it is the world’s largest video platform. Ethereum (2015): By 2022 it hosted DeFi, NFTs and most stablecoins, and completed the Merge. Today it underpins a large part of on-chain finance. Amazon (1994): By 2001 it had billions in annual revenue and its first profitable quarter. Today it runs AWS and a global logistics network. OpenAI (2015): By late 2022 ChatGPT reached 100 million users in about two months. Today its tools are part of daily work for millions. Anthropic (2021): Not yet seven years old, but within roughly two years of founding it shipped Claude, and today developers and businesses worldwide use it. NVIDIA (1993): By 2000 it had gone public and shipped the first GPU. Today its chips power the AI boom, and it is among the largest companies in the world. Solana (2020): Just over six years in, it ranks among the most active blockchains, with real trading, payments and apps. Tesla (2003): By 2010 it was selling the Roadster, had gone public and bought the Fremont plant. Today it sells well over a million cars a year. SpaceX (2002): By 2009 it had reached orbit and won a major NASA contract. Today it is the leading launch provider, with reusable rockets and crewed missions. Starlink (2015): By 2022 it had over a million subscribers. Today it serves millions across well over a hundred markets. PayPal (1998): By 2005 it was the payment rail for eBay and held tens of millions of accounts. Today it serves hundreds of millions. XRP (2012): By 2019 it had live payment pilots with real financial institutions. Today it remains a top-ranked crypto asset. Some of these came faster than others, and not every one was a smooth ride. But each had something people could use, pay with, watch, ride, or build on, long before the Summit stage. Back to Pi So what does Pi have beyond internal statistics and an upcoming event? Where is the app a Pioneer opens every week to pay a bill, hire a freelancer, or shop at a store? Where is the independently verifiable data on active users, real transactions and merchants? If Pi’s apps and utilities exist at scale, the evidence could be shown plainly. If they do not, then 60 million Engaged Pioneers, 300 apps and 18 million verified identities risk remaining numbers on a slide. A vision can be as grand as it likes. Pi’s mission of a people-powered digital economy is a bold one. But a mission earns credibility through working products, not repeated promises. The utilities and ecosystem that the Core Team often describes need to show up in the real world, where ordinary people can use them, not only in announcements. Heart and head None of this is an argument for abandoning Pi, or for hating it. Believing in a project is natural, especially after years of patience. But belief works best when it has two parts: a heart that wants the project to succeed, and a head that asks for evidence. Blind faith helps no one, including the project itself. The Summit could be a turning point. It could also be another announcement. The difference will not be decided by hype or by loyalty, but by what people can actually use afterward. Ask the question now, and expect a real answer. #PiArt

A few thoughts after TOKEN2049 Singapore, following a long journey and finally making my way back home. Quite unexpectedly, I met a Product Owner from Pi Network during the event. I should make one thing clear from the beginning: I am not someone who understands Pi Network deeply. I am writing this simply from the perspective of someone relatively new to it, and I would genuinely welcome corrections or different perspectives from those who have followed the project for longer. I only began looking seriously into Pi Network about a month ago. Nicolas Kokkalis, however, was not a completely unfamiliar name to me. I first came across Nicolas roughly eight years ago, when I happened to attend a panel where he was presenting StarX, the incubator he was working on at the time. To be quite frank, StarX itself did not leave a particularly strong impression on me. What I did remember was Nicolas. He struck me as someone with an unusually deep understanding of distributed systems — arguably among the stronger people in that field at Stanford. Later, I briefly had the opportunity to speak with him during a gathering with mutual acquaintances. It was nothing particularly significant, but I remember people describing him as a rather calm and reserved person: someone who rarely made public statements and was far more comfortable with research than publicity. And that was more or less where the story ended for me. I continued researching AI systems, while he continued on his own path. Until recently. As I began exploring the concepts of free mining, decentralised finance and community-owned digital infrastructure, a surprising number of people told me: “You should study what Nicolas built.” I have never been uncomfortable learning from someone else, regardless of age, background or industry. So I spent about a week studying his project, particularly from the perspective of what lessons might be applicable to the decentralised AI infrastructure we are building. What I discovered was that the problem was considerably more complicated than I had imagined. Building technology is difficult. Building technology for millions of people is considerably more difficult. And building something where millions of people attach financial expectations, emotions and personal hopes to that technology is an entirely different matter. Social media makes this even more complicated. Perhaps this is also why I understand, to some extent, why Nicolas appears to prefer research to constant public communication. And I respect that. Recently, he has found himself at the centre of considerable criticism, particularly around the decline in the price of PI. Some people believe that he is deliberately suppressing the token price, or that he should personally be held responsible for its market performance. I see it somewhat differently. Before Amazon became what it is today, it went through periods when its survival was genuinely questioned. Tesla went through similarly difficult periods. Had every difficult chapter been reduced entirely to the share price — and had every founder been judged solely by short-term market performance — some of the companies we now consider transformative might never have survived long enough to fulfil their ambitions. That does not mean founders should be immune from criticism. Nor does it mean price, tokenomics, transparency or execution do not matter. They absolutely do. But price and vision are not always the same thing. What I find interesting about Nicolas’s original idea is its ambition: to make digital currency accessible without requiring people to begin with significant capital or pass through the traditional barriers associated with acquiring digital assets, while ultimately pursuing a monetary network that is less dependent on conventional financial intermediaries.