Pi Network (PI)

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Historical price evolution of Pi Network

Daily historical data. Updated automatically.

Pi Network was conceived in 2018 at Stanford University by three co-founders with complementary academic profiles: Nicolas Kokkalis, Doctor of Computer Science specialising in distributed systems; Chengdiao Fan, Doctor of Anthropological Sciences with specialisation in social computing; and Vincent McPhillip, MBA from Stanford, responsible for the community area. The project's initial proposal moved away from traditional cryptocurrency launch models, focusing on mobile accessibility and mass participation without technical barriers.

On 14th March 2019, coinciding with Pi Day (3.14), the Pi Network mobile application was officially launched. Unlike other crypto projects, it did not conduct any ICO or token sale, opting for free access through an invitation system. Users could accumulate PI tokens simply by pressing a daily button in the application, without requiring energy consumption or specialised hardware. During this stage, known as Phase 1, the network operated as a research and development phase.

In December 2021, Pi Network reached a significant milestone with the launch of the Enclosed Mainnet, where its blockchain began to function operationally but remained isolated from the outside through a firewall. Tokens were not transferable or tradeable externally, and all active nodes remained under the control of the founding team, called Pi Core Team. By 2023, the platform had managed to surpass 60 million registered users, known as "Pioneers".

20th February 2025 marked the most anticipated moment of the project with the launch of the Open Network at 08:00 UTC. The firewall was removed, allowing migrated PI tokens to become transferable and tradeable on external exchanges. PI began its public trading at around 1.47 USD, reached an all-time high of 2.99 USD on 26th February, although it closed its first month below 1 USD. At that time, more than 10.14 million accounts had migrated to the mainnet and more than 19 million had completed the KYC process.

On 14th March 2025, the grace period for KYC and token migration concluded, simultaneously deactivating the daily mining button in the application. The team justified this measure as necessary to purge the network of inactive and unverified accounts, seeking to stabilise the circulating supply. In April 2025, Pi Network completed its first round of rewards to KYC validators, processing more than 526 million validations carried out by more than one million human validators.

Throughout 2025, PI experienced a fall of more than 90% from its all-time high. Binance conducted a community survey where 86% of participants voted in favour of listing PI, although the platform did not act accordingly. Analysts identified as main obstacles the centralisation of governance, with the Core Team controlling more than 60% of the total supply, the scarce real utility of the token and low liquidity. During this period, Vietnam concentrated nearly half of the network's active nodes. On 30th September, Pi Network launched on testnet a protocol DEX/AMM alongside token creation tools, whilst in November Pi Node was rebranded as Pi Desktop (version 0.5.4), improving node reliability and announcing collaboration with OpenMind for decentralised AI computation tasks.

On 11th February 2026, PI marked its all-time low of 0.1312 USD, almost exactly one year after the Open Network launch, with a circulating supply representing approximately 9% of the maximum supply of 100,000 million PI. On 12th March the native DEX PiDex was launched with protocol upgrade v20.2, allowing for the first time holders to exchange assets on-chain without using centralised exchanges. Co-founders Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan participated as keynote speakers at the Consensus 2026 conference in Miami on 6th May, with the launch of Protocol 23 scheduled for 11th May, introducing native smart contracts that would enable DeFi and dApps. During May unlocks of approximately 184.5 million PI tokens were expected, generating additional selling pressure.

Pi Network operates as a layer 1 blockchain specifically designed to function on mobile devices without requiring specialised hardware or generating high energy consumption. Its technical architecture is based on the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), an implementation of the Federated Byzantine Agreement model that replaces traditional competitive mining mechanisms. Instead of solving complex mathematical proofs or locking large amounts of capital, nodes validate transactions through social trust networks: users configure "security circles" comprised of 3 to 5 trusted people, creating a global trust graph that determines which nodes can participate in the consensus process.

The token accumulation process during the mobile mining phase (2019-2025) functioned as a centralised accounting system on the Pi Core Team's servers, without involving actual blockchain activity. Balances only acquire effective existence on the blockchain after completing the KYC identity verification process and migrating to the mainnet. The tokenomics establish a maximum supply of 100,000 million PI distributed in an 80/20 proportion: 80% is allocated to the community (mining rewards, node staking, KYC and application developers) whilst 20% corresponds to the founding team with vesting mechanisms applied.

As of May 2026, the circulating supply represents approximately 9% of the total available, with continuous unlocks generating structural deflationary pressure on the token price. Since the implementation of Protocol 23 in May 2026, the network incorporates native support for smart contracts, expanding its technical functionality beyond basic value transactions.

Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.