On February 20, 2025, Pi Network dropped its firewall after six years of mobile mining and three years of enclosed mainnet, allowing PI to trade externally. Fifteen months later, PI trades near $0.15, smart contracts just went live on mainnet, and the project is in the middle of a major protocol upgrade. Here is what happened in between.
The starting point: six years of buildup
Pi Network launched in 2019 as a mobile mining app from Stanford-affiliated researchers Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan. Users mined by tapping a button once every 24 hours, no hardware required. Trust was built through "Security Circles," a social graph for Sybil resistance, and consensus used a modified Stellar Consensus Protocol. By late 2024, Pi claimed over 60 million users, predominantly in Asia and Africa. In December 2021, it launched an enclosed mainnet — a live blockchain behind a firewall. Users completed KYC to migrate mined PI to mainnet wallets, but external connectivity was blocked. The enclosed phase lasted over three years. The Core Team set three conditions for opening: sufficient KYC completion, a developed utility ecosystem, and favorable market conditions. In February 2025, they deemed conditions met.
Opening day: wild volatility
At 8:00 AM UTC on February 20, 2025, external connectivity enabled. OKX, Bitget, MEXC, and Gate listed PI on day one. Trading opened around $1.47, ran to $2.10 within hours, and settled at roughly $1.01 by day's end. It hit an all-time high of $2.99 in late February. On the same day, a wick to $0.049 created the first all-time low. Two structural features shaped everything: first, migrated supply was a tiny fraction of eventual circulating supply, creating a steady inflation dynamic; second, Binance and Coinbase did not list, denying easy access for institutional and high-volume retail traders.
The long decline: supply unlocks and demand constraints
From its February ATH, PI began a prolonged slide. By mid-2025 it was below $1, by late 2025 in the $0.40–$0.60 range, by February 2026 at $0.187, and by mid-May 2026 near $0.15, with a market cap of ~$1.6 billion and a CoinMarketCap rank around #55. The decline maps to steady supply unlocks (second migrations, validator rewards, referral bonuses) and constrained demand from the absence of tier-1 listings. As of mid-2026, roughly 10.4 billion PI circulate out of a 100 billion maximum supply, meaning ~90% of eventual supply has not entered the market. Broader crypto market conditions were mixed, but PI's decline was steeper than Bitcoin's.
The KYC backlog: a human bottleneck
KYC verification became a bottleneck. By late 2025, Pi reported about 19 million KYC-verified users and 16 million migrated, out of a claimed 60 million+ user base. A large share remained in "tentative" status, with mined PI inaccessible. The Core Team removed a 30-day waiting period, expanded KYC validator rewards, and made 2.5 million more users eligible for migration in January 2026. In 2026, Pi began testing palm-based biometric verification. The KYC process is central to Pi's identity layer and Sybil resistance, and the Core Team has positioned it as "human infrastructure for AI." For unverified users, especially those with less common ID formats, it has meant long waits and unclear outcomes.
Ecosystem development: slow but steady
Through 2025, Pi rolled out several initiatives: Pi App Studio (a low-code platform for app building), PiFest (merchant events with over 100,000 merchants signed up), Pi Launchpad (token issuance platform, MVP on testnet Q1 2026), and a Chainlink integration for oracle services. Real-world adoption remained limited, but documented cases of PI payments for goods and services emerged. Testnet1 underwent phased upgrades, reaching version 23 on September 18, 2025, as a staging ground for mainnet upgrade.
Pi Day 2026 and Protocol 23
On March 14, 2026 (Pi Day), the Core Team announced the Pi Launchpad MVP on testnet, Pi App Studio integration with mainnet PI payments, and an accelerated protocol upgrade roadmap. Over the following weeks: Protocol 21.2 deployed on April 6, 22.1 on April 22, Protocol 22 confirmed on mainnet on April 27, and Protocol 23 activated on mainnet on May 11, 2026, a week early, with a May 15 deadline for all mainnet nodes to upgrade. Protocol 23 is the most significant technical milestone, enabling smart contracts and paving the way for Pi DEX and Launchpad. But Pi still faces tier-1 exchange gaps, KYC migration delays, and supply unlock pressure. The road ahead remains long.