Mục Lục

Pi Network coin supply

As the transition to enclosed mainnet starts, pioneers are starting to wonder what they should do with their Pi. One thing to understand how scarce is Pi is to look at the supply of Pi Network Coins.

Last December, Pi Core Team announced the transition to mainnet and released new white paper chapters giving details on Pi coin supply. Let’s go into further details and try to see exactly how Pi is distributed.

Pre-mainnet mining mechanism and supply

Before mainnet, the total amount of Pi coins was not capped. Indeed, the Core Team’s main goal was to grow Pi’s user base and distribute Pi to as many people as possible all over the world.

The goal was also to reward early pioneers and make sure that Pi became scarce as more people joined. This is why a halving of the base mining rate was implemented. Every time the number of pioneers was multiplied by 10, or reached a significant milestone, the base mining rate halved.

Pi Network's base mining rate halved every time the user base was multiplied by ten B: Systemwide base mining rate
I : Individual pioneer base mining rate

This phase was successful in growing Pi Network’s user base to over 30 million pioneers, all throughout the world. It also accomplished its aim to make cryptocurrency accessible to many people that were left out of the crypto revolution.

Pi Network mainnet supply

To encourage mining and welcome new pioneers as well, Pi Core Team decided to keep a certain minin reward once mainnet is reached. However the mining mechanism will change a bit.

Based on the size of the network and the expected volume of transactions in the future, the Core Team settled on a maximum total supply of 100 billion Pi.

Furthermore, the initial distribution of Pi coins announced in the original White Paper is maintained: 20% of the circulation supply is for the Core Team and 80% for the community. Therefore the maximum supply for Core team is 20 billion Pi and 80 billion Pi for the community.

Distribution of Pi Network's coin between the community and the core team

In the new chapters of the white paper, Pi Core Team insisted on the fact that there was no allocation for any potential ICO (initial coin offering). They warned on the risks of scams. Therefore you should not trusts anyone pretending to run a crowdfunding campaign for Pi Network.

Out of the 80 billion Pi reserved for the community, it is further divided into 65 billion for mining rewards, 5 billion for liquidity pool reserve (for Pi Apps and ecosystem developers) and 10 billion for supporting the community and the ecosystem which will be later managed by the Pi Foundation.

Pi Network's coin maximum total supply is distributed between different entities

This further revealed that there had been approximately already 30 billion Pi mined in the pre-mainnet phase, by discarding between 1/3 to 2/3 of this total with fake accounts and inactive users, Core Team estimates a total amount of 10-20 billion Pi on enclosed mainnet after everyone passes KYC.

Mainnet new mining mechanism

Now that there is a maximum amount of Pi which can be earned through mining rewards, let’s see how the mining mechanism was updated.

The base mining rate will decrease at a much higher frequency (approximately every month) but at a rate which is determined by Core Team (approximately 3% for now) and which will probably evolve.

More precisely, the Core Team will define yearly supply limits based on a declining formula and this supply limit will be updated each year. The decrease in mining rate will adapt to match this limit.

During this phase, pioneers will be rewards with Pi for mining but also by contributing to the security, stability and development of the Network by using apps, running nodes or locking up Pi.

Indeed, before transitionning to mainnet, every pioneer was asked to decide a portion of Pi they wanted to lock up and for a certain amount of time. This was made to ensure more stability for Pi coin, and reduce the circulating supply of coins on enclosed mainnet. It is estimated that the average lockup rate is 80% (many pioneers forgot to set their lockup rate and the default one was 90%…) and we do not have any data for the average length of these lockups.

Once everyone passes KYC, we can estimate a total amount of 10-20 billion Pi transferred to mainnet, and with an average lockup rate of 80%, this gives us a total circulating supply of approximately 2-4 billion Pi.

This amount should start to increase in the future as new mining rewards are transferred to mainnet and locked Pi’s start to unlock.