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The team have recently had their crypto mining app released on iOS and Android. The mining process doesn’t consume any extra battery on your phone. This is the very early beta stage of the project and so the coins aren’t listed on any exchanges and so currently have no value. You can find out more at minepi.com. You need an invitation code to get in on the beta stage of this project. Feel free to use mine: bimdas . The more people you refer the more coins you can mine per hour. The amount of miners recently topped 1k users where the hash rate has halved. This project has the potential to go nowhere but since you only need to initiate the mining process once a day on your phone, (to weed out bots), it costs you nothing to get in on the ground floor.

Update: on the identities of the team members and their link to Stanford:

Here was a message from one of the team members on the Pi inapp chat.

“@vince @crypto three of the core members of the team are Stanford graduates. I am a grad from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The others two are Stanford PhDs (who taught a blockchain development course at Stanford). We are trying to be deliberate about how we introduce ourselves to the community. Appreciate your patience with us while we work on team page, intros etc.”

I went on the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research website (https://cbr.stanford.edu/) and can only assume that any two of the faculty members could be the two Stanford phds that @vince is referring to. From that page there is a link to https://blockchaincollective.io/ that shows the team members. I can then assume that @vince is Vince Mcphillip who is on that team member list. From his LinkedIn page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentmcphillip) this confirms that and it also gives us the Pi network LinkedIn page (https://www.linkedin.com/company/pi-net?trk=public_profile_position_image)

This confirms the Stanford University link and lends more credibility to the team. Who better to start a new crypto than people who have dedicated their lives to studying and teaching blockchain at one of the world’s top, computer science universities. Not only do they have an in-depth understanding on the subject but they also have an unlimited supply of students to pick from to contribute to the project.

Update: the next halving of the mine-rate will occur once 10k active users have signed up. It’s currently around 4K so there is plenty of time to get mining before the supply rate gets restricted.

Update May 16th: 6k users are now mining Pi. That is pretty impressive growth considering there were only 1k users 10 days ago. At this rate, 10k users will be reached very soon and so will the next halving of the mine rate!

Update 18th May: Even though the team behind Pi haven’t openly revealed themselves yet, a bit of simple internet sleuthing has revealed to me the main suspects.

The three Pi members who have answered questions on the inapp chat as core members are:

@vince – I already know this is Vincent McPhillip (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentmcphillip/)

@nicholas – I’m going to assume this is Nicholas Kokkalis who is also on the https://blockchaincollective.io/ and is listed as a Stanford PhD on his LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kokkalis/)

@cfan – Chengdiao Fan who is a Stanford PhD (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chengdiao-fan-07028428/?trk=public_profile_browsemap_mini-profile_title) I found her link from Nicholas’s LinkedIn page.

That completes the identities of the 3 core members behind Pi.

Update 21st May – The Pi network is a couple of days away from hitting 10k active users. This means that the mining rate will halve. That’s around a 10x increase in users in under 3 weeks. The next mining halving will happen at 100k users. This project is still in phase 1. We won’t see Pi getting on any exchanges until phase 3, when users will be able to send and receive their Pi, which they predict will occur around Q4 of this year. Once Pi can be exchanged for actual cold hard cash, I predict the user numbers is going to explode and so will the mining halving rates.

Update 23rd May – 10k users have been reached and the mining rate has been halved or will be halved in your next mining session. The next halving will occur at 100k users.

Update 5th June – The Pi team have released their bios that can be found in the Pi app. The team consists of three people I listed back in the 18th of May update to this post, but now it is official and people no longer have to worry about an anonymous team.

Update 28th June – We have now reached 75k users. Once we reach 100k users, the next halving will occur. This will likely happen in a couple of weeks.

Update 6th of July – 100,000 active users have now been reached and the mining rate has halved. That’s a gain of 25k users in 8 days! The success of a cryptocurrency usually depends on the amount of holders using it so Pi has a great head-start in that department. The climb to the next halving at 1 million users will probably take quite a bit longer to reach. If we continue at this exponential user growth, I predict we could be there in around 5 months.

Update 20th of July – There are now 150,000 active Pi users.

Update 2nd of August – Another 50k users have joined in under 2 weeks. There are now 200,000 active Pi users! Pi has now surpassed the other cloud mining app, Electroneum, which at this moment has 166,798 active miners. (low-key Ref code for Electroneum mining boost: CC6D53).

Update 28th of August – I seem to be the victim of the white screen bug along with many others. This means every time I open the app I get a white screen and can no longer press the mining button. Hopefully this is just temporary. I’ll be interested to know how many other people have this bug. Update – the white screen bug seems to have sorted itself out within a few hours. It could be a server issue.

Update 29th of August – Pi Network has now grown to 300,000 active users!

Update 6th of September -The Pi network is now at 325,000 active users. At this rate, hitting 1 million users and the next halving will be here in no time.

Update 17th of September – 400,000 users are now mining on Pi! Almost halfway to the next halving.

Update 18th of September – Just saw this news article on Pi and it’s creators from the Stanford Daily. https://www.stanforddaily.com/2019/09/16/stanford-grads-develop-cryptocurrency-for-smartphone-users-to-increase-its-accessibility/

Update 25th of September – Another week and another 50k users have joined. That brings the total active users to 450k.

Update 4th of October – Things seem to be picking up steam and we are now at 550k users. It seems 1 million active users and the next halving is closer than I thought. The Pi developers have also mentioned that inapp transfer of Pi is coming soon. This is a major step towards Pi becoming a cryptocurrency of real value.

Update 11th of October – we are now seeing exponential growth and the active user count of Pi has topped 650k users. That’s 100k new users in one week!

Update 17th of October – next halving at 1 million users is close with the Pi network now 800k users strong!

Update 27th of October – we are mere days away from hitting 1 million Pi users. The user count crossed 900k yesterday. When the 1 million mark happens, the mining rate will halve again until we hit 10 million users. After that, new users may not be able to mine any Pi.

Update 31st of October – well it was inevitable. The Pi network has now crossed 1 million engaged users! Only 6 months ago it seemed that reaching 10k users was a big deal! I don’t think there’s ever been a cryptocurrency out there that has grown at such a rapid pace. The next halving will be after 10 million users have been reached. With the exponential growth in Pi’s user base, that could be reached in a few months. After that, the Pi developers will decide whether to allow new users to mine Pi. Hopefully they cut it off to increase the scarcity of the coin.

Update 14th of November – the number of new Pi users keep trucking on and the count is now at 1.25 million users.

Update 11th of December – a major milestone is currently underway with inapp transfers between Pi users to be introduced before the end of the year. At first, only a few users will be hand picked by the community to test out and lay the foundations for the future Pi marketplace. Each Pi user can currently nominate 3 Pi users, including themselves, to be part of this important milestone. Important because it’s the first time users can begin trading Pi for real goods and services, thus giving us the very first indication of the actual monetary value of Pi as a currency.

The other reason why this is limited to a few people is because the KYC processes that are currently available cost money to go through a third party supplier. The Pi team can only afford to pay for a small group to be validated as they are paying out of their own pockets. With over a million Pi users and Pi currently being worth zero real world dollars, there is no way they would be able to fund for everyone to get validated. They are exploring other options and there’s no doubt in my mind that they will come up with a KYC solution that will be cost free. KYC and user validation is important for the health of the Pi network to weed out the bots and multiple account users. All Pi generated by these bots and bad actors will be burnt once the network goes live.

Update 25th of February – Vince has signaled we have now hit over 3.5 million active users. The 14th of March is approaching which will be one year since Pi first launched. This date (3/14) is referred to as Pi day and the developers have been asking the community for ideas to celebrate this day. So far a boost of 3.14 Pi an hour for everyone, for one day, seems to be the most requested. I’m more looking forward to the marketplace opening up for everyone. The pi.app web address apparently was bought by the Pi team for 10,000 Pi on the marketplace. Other things traded for Pi include air jordan shoes, video editing services and truck parts. I can’t wait to be able to use Pi as an actual currency!

Update 29th of February – We have finally received an official update on how the pilot, in-app transfer program has been coming along. The team have released a video on the app detailing what type of things have been traded and for how much Pi such as:

A collection of honey sold for 18 Pi including shipping.

A digital camera sold for 65 pi.

A special edition pair of Nike Jordans sold for an undisclosed amount of Pi.

A children’s scooter sold for 3.5 Pi.

Many other transactions including Pi for children’s diapers, oil, batteries, and automotive parts.

An unofficial website (thepioneernetwork.weebly.com/transactions.html) has listed other transactions that have apparently happened in the pilot program but until this has been confirmed by the official team, I’d take whatever is written on that site with a grain of salt.

Update 14th of March – it’s been 1 year since the launch of Pi and the developers have celebrated this day by officially launching phase 2 of the project. Most notable of phase 2 is the introduction of Pi apps which will be ways Pi users can trade and spend Pi on goods and services. The other exciting announcement is that Pi nodes will be released on the 30th of March. This will be the first step to the decentralisation of the Pi network and will involve users installing node software on their computers to help build the blockchain that will run Pi. There is a raffle where 10 random people who are mining today can win 3141 Pi. This includes new users who will instantly gain 1 Pi upon joining.

Update 6th of May – So it’s been over a month since Pi launched phase 2 and since then a couple of things have been announce. The team have released the desktop node software that will allow people to run their computers as nodes or supernodes that will run the Pi testnet. The testnet will allow the team to figure out any necessary bug-fixes and other software related improvements to make sure it will all run smoothly when they go to phase 3 and release Pi’s blockchain network. The other thing they have announced is the development of the Pi applications platform which will be where a marketplace and other apps can be developed to make use of Pi as a tradable currency. This is the exciting part where the millions of Pi users will be able to dictate what the value of Pi will be before it even gets to an exchange.

Update 8th of July – Pi Network has announced the number of engaged members now stands at 6 million users. They have made an important distinction this time in saying that the 6 million users have done 3 or more mining sessions. This tells me that out of the 6 million users, the actual number of active users who are still mining is probably around a third of that number. This is judging from the number of active miners in my earning circle. This tells me that there could be way less Pi out there then people have previously guessed. The Pi team still haven’t decided whether they will halve the mining rate at 10 million users or to stop the mining altogether. They have also released the SDK for their Pi apps platform a week ago which means app developers can now create mobile apps that use Pi as a trading currency. This should be interesting to see how this turns out in the coming months.

Update 9th of August – The Pi network is now at 7 million engaged users. With a 1 million user increase in one month, we are probably under 3 months away from hitting 10 million users. It still isn’t known whether we will go through another halving or if mining Pi is to stop once this happens. I don’t think the dev team have made up their minds on this yet. They also announced that a Pi convention is coming in Q3. I’m interested to see if they can get any app developers to talk about their app ideas and any progress made. I’m guessing it’s going to be an online zoom type convention considering these pandemic times we live in.

Download the app from minepi.com/bimdas