Pi Network’s First Year on Open Mainnet: Price Plummets 95% Despite Upgrades

After over six years of development through mobile mining and three years of a closed network, Pi Network officially launched trading on February 20, 2025.

Summary

After a year and three months, the price has stabilized around 15 cents, smart contracts are now functioning on the main network, and the project is undergoing a significant upgrade. What’s happened since the network initially opened is complex, and hasn’t been fully explained in one place. Here’s a timeline, based on official announcements from Pi Network, detailing their progress.

The starting point

To make sense of where Pi sits in May 2026, it helps to remember where it began.

Pi Network began in 2019 as a mobile app created by researchers connected to Stanford University. The founders, Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan, still lead the project. What made Pi different was the idea that anyone could ‘mine’ it using just their smartphone – no expensive equipment, high electricity bills, or technical expertise needed.

Pi would build trust by letting users confirm the identities of people they already know, creating a network of connected and verified individuals. This network would help prevent fake accounts. Pi’s system for confirming transactions would be similar to the one used by Stellar, relying on these connections rather than the energy-intensive ‘mining’ process used by Bitcoin.

The Pi network grew rapidly, reaching over 60 million users in more than 230 countries by late 2024, with the majority located in Asia and Africa. To participate, users simply needed to open the app once a day and tap a button, which was considered their contribution to the network. Importantly, no actual cryptocurrency was being exchanged or recorded on a blockchain until users completed identity verification and the network fully launched.

In December 2021, Pi Network launched a test version of its blockchain called Enclosed Mainnet, which operated in a closed, secure environment. Users who verified their identity could transfer their Pi holdings to wallets on this network, but these wallets couldn’t connect to outside exchanges or other wallets. This phase lasted for over three years and was Pi’s longest to date. The Pi team stated they would remove the security restrictions once three things happened: enough users had completed identity verification, a range of useful applications had been built on the network, and the overall market conditions were suitable.

In February 2025, Pi judged those conditions met. The Open Mainnet was set for February 20.

February 20, 2025: the firewall drops

On February 20, 2025, at 8:00 AM UTC, Pi Network allowed its PI tokens to be transferred outside of the Pi Network ecosystem – meaning users could send them to exchanges, swap platforms, and other wallets. Several large exchanges, like OKX, Bitget, MEXC, and Gate, began listing PI that same day, either directly or initially as tokens representing future PI, which would convert to actual PI as the network became fully connected.

Trading began around $1.47, and the price quickly jumped to $2.10 due to strong initial interest. By the end of the first day, it closed at about $1.01. Over the following weeks, as more platforms listed the asset and it became easier to trade, the price peaked at $2.99 in late February 2025. This initial surge in price showed how much demand had built up over the years from a dedicated community, many of whom had been actively mining the asset since 2019.

The very first price determination also resulted in a record low. On February 20th, during trading, the price of PI briefly dropped to $0.049 due to a lack of buyers and rushed selling, coinciding with a sudden increase in available supply. Although the price quickly recovered, this brief dip became a notable part of the price chart.

Two structural features of the launch shaped everything that followed.

When Pi Network first launched on the mainnet, only a small portion of the total Pi coins were available. While the maximum supply is 100 billion Pi, only a fraction was initially held in user wallets. The remaining Pi would gradually become available as more users verified their identities (KYC), and as the network distributed rewards to validators over time. This meant that the amount of Pi in circulation would automatically increase each month, no matter how much demand there was.

Also, the two biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, didn’t immediately add the new coin to their platforms. While Binance held a poll where the community showed strong interest in the coin, the exchange didn’t follow through. Coinbase didn’t make any announcement at all. This lack of major exchange listings was the first indication to the community that the launch wasn’t the finish line, and more waiting might be necessary.

The early months: price discovery and the post-launch correction

Since reaching its peak in February, the price of PI has steadily decreased. By mid-2025, it had fallen below $1, and by late 2025, it was trading between $0.40 and $0.60. A year after the launch of Open Mainnet in February 2026, PI was worth around $0.187. As of mid-May 2026, it’s currently valued at about $0.15, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.6 billion, ranking it around #55 on CoinMarketCap.

Several factors drove the decline, and they map cleanly onto the structural features above.

The planned release of Pi coins has created ongoing pressure on the price. As Pi processed account migrations, validator rewards, and bonuses through 2025 and 2026, the number of coins available increased each month. With more Pi entering circulation and limited access to major exchanges, this naturally pushed the price down. By mid-2026, approximately 10.4 billion Pi were in circulation out of a total maximum supply of 100 billion, meaning the vast majority of Pi coins hadn’t yet been released.

Limited availability on exchanges held back demand for PI. While PI was traded on some smaller exchanges, it wasn’t listed on major platforms like Binance or Coinbase, making it difficult for large institutional investors and high-volume traders to buy and sell. Consequently, trading activity on the exchanges that did list PI remained low compared to the project’s overall number of users. By late May 2026, daily trading volume ranged from $1.5 million to $25 million, depending on the data source – significantly less than similar tokens ranked around 50th in terms of popularity.

The cryptocurrency market in 2025 was uneven. Bitcoin hit record highs towards the end of the year, but then experienced a significant drop at the beginning of 2026. Other cryptocurrencies, or ‘altcoins,’ generally followed this same trend. However, PI’s price fell more dramatically than Bitcoin’s, and the overall economic climate wasn’t favorable for riskier altcoins between late 2025 and mid-2026.

The KYC backlog: a story that defines the user experience

Running underneath the price story was a quieter, more human one: the KYC backlog.

Pi requires users to verify their identity before they can move their earned tokens to their main wallets. In 2025, this process became a slowdown because the number of users grew faster than the system could handle.

By late 2025, Pi had around 19 million users who had completed the identity verification process (KYC) and approximately 16 million who had moved their Pi coins to the main network. However, Pi claimed to have over 60 million users total, meaning a significant number – those in “tentative” status – hadn’t completed verification or moved their mined Pi, leaving those coins unavailable to them.

Pi tackled some key issues throughout 2025 and into 2026. The development team simplified the onboarding process by removing the 30-day wait for new users. They also increased rewards for those who help verify identities within the community, and in January 2026, opened up migration to an additional 2.5 million users.

Around the beginning of 2026, Pi was testing a new way to verify identities using palm scans. The announcement made on March 14th, 2026 (Pi Day) emphasized that completing account migrations and rewarding those who helped verify identities were still major goals, showing that Pi was still working to clear a backlog of accounts.

KYC (Know Your Customer) has a mixed reception within the Pi community. The Pi team sees it as essential for establishing a secure and unique identity system, and as a way to prevent fake accounts – they’re even starting to talk about it as a valuable source of verified human data that could be used for future AI projects. However, many users who haven’t yet been verified, especially those from countries with less standard ID types, have faced lengthy delays and confusing results. Both of these viewpoints are common within the Pi community.

Ecosystem development through 2025

While Pi Network was working on moving to a new blockchain and getting listed on exchanges, it also focused on growing its overall ecosystem. Progress wasn’t always steady, and people both outside and within the Pi community sometimes had different opinions on what achievements were most important, but a clear timeline of events exists.

Throughout 2025, Pi introduced several new features to expand its platform. One key addition was the Pi App Studio, a user-friendly tool that allows anyone – even those without coding experience – to create applications for the Pi ecosystem. In November 2025, the studio was updated to include the ability to export source code and offer more powerful development options.

As a Pi investor, I’ve been following PiFest, which is basically a push to get businesses to start accepting Pi as payment. It’s been growing, and they’re saying over 100,000 merchants have signed up for at least one PiFest event through 2025. While Pi isn’t widely used outside the Pi community yet, these events *are* showing real people actually using it to buy things, which is a positive sign. It’s good to see those experiments are resulting in documented transactions.

The Pi Launchpad is a planned platform for launching new tokens within the Pi ecosystem. A basic version is expected to be available for testing in early 2026. This Launchpad will allow projects built on Pi to create and distribute their own usable tokens, and its final design will be shaped by feedback from the Pi community during the testing phase.

In 2025, Pi Network announced it would integrate Chainlink to add reliable data feeds to its system. This was designed to support the development of future financial applications on Pi. However, the full benefits of this integration depended on a subsequent upgrade to Pi’s smart contracts.

Testnet1 gradually improved its technology throughout 2025, reaching version 23 on September 18th. This was done as a preparation step before upgrading the main network.

Pi Day 2026 and the protocol upgrade cycle

March 14, 2026 – Pi Day – marked a major yearly milestone for the project. That year’s Pi Day included an unusually large number of important announcements.

As an analyst, I’ve been following the recent Pi Network developments closely. The biggest news is the launch of the Pi Launchpad MVP on the Testnet – this allows developers to start testing how token issuance will work before the main network goes live. We also saw a significant upgrade to Pi App Studio, now enabling integration with real PI payments on the mainnet, which means apps can finally transact using actual PI instead of test tokens. Finally, the Pi Core Team shared an accelerated roadmap for protocol upgrades, with Protocol 20.2 already live and a clear path outlined all the way to Protocol 23.

Over the next few weeks, system upgrades were rolled out carefully and on schedule. Protocol 21.2 launched on April 6, 2026, followed by Protocol 22.1 on April 22. Protocol 22 was then confirmed on the main network on April 27. Protocol 23 went live on the main network on May 11, 2026 – a week ahead of schedule. All systems connected to the main network had until May 15 to complete the upgrade, or they would be disconnected.

Protocol 23 is a major step forward for Pi, marking the arrival of full smart contract capabilities on the Mainnet. This means Pi can now support decentralized applications like Pi DEX, lending platforms, and the Pi Launchpad, which have been tested and are now ready for real-world use. Pi has also launched subscription-based smart contracts (PiRC2) for testing, and plans to introduce further improvements to token standards (PiRC1) in future updates.

In early May 2026, Pi’s creators, Kokkalis and Fan, spoke at Consensus 2026, a major cryptocurrency conference. This was their first significant public appearance in a while, and they used the opportunity to rebrand Pi as “human infrastructure for AI.” They emphasized that Pi’s verified users had collectively completed over 526 million tasks to help improve the network.

As a Pi investor, I’ve noticed a really interesting change in how the Pi Core Team talks about the project. They used to focus on Pi being a cryptocurrency you ‘mine’ on your phone. Now, they’re emphasizing that Pi’s biggest strength is building a system that proves you’re a real person online – a ‘verified human identity layer.’ It feels like they’re positioning Pi for something bigger than just being another crypto.

The exchange listing question

For the last fifteen months, the Pi community has consistently asked about when Pi will be listed on major exchanges (tier-1 exchanges). We still don’t have a complete answer yet.

PI is now available on a growing number of cryptocurrency exchanges. It first launched on OKX, and then Bitget, MEXC, and Gate added it shortly after. Over the following months, exchanges like Bitfinex and HTX also began offering PI. Throughout 2025 and 2026, smaller, more regional exchanges also started to include PI. By mid-2026, PI was listed on many more exchanges than at its initial launch, although it wasn’t yet available on the largest, most well-known global exchanges.

As a researcher tracking developments in the crypto space, I observed that Binance held a community vote in early 2025, and the PI project received significant support. Despite this, Binance ultimately decided not to list the project, and they haven’t publicly shared any reasons for this decision or indicated when they might reconsider. Similarly, Coinbase hasn’t made any public commitments regarding a potential listing.

Kraken initially planned to list Pi, a cryptocurrency, by March 2026, a detail that gained attention within the Pi community. This listing depended on two things: Pi successfully launching on its Open Mainnet (which it did), and Kraken completing its own internal checks. However, as of late May 2026, Pi has not yet been listed on Kraken.

As an analyst, I’ve been tracking how Pi is being traded, and I’m seeing a lot of activity on smaller platforms involving what are essentially ‘IOU’ tokens. These aren’t the official Pi tokens issued by the Pi Core Team; they’re more like promises to deliver Pi later, if certain conditions are met. It’s important to understand this distinction because the price of these IOUs can fluctuate independently of the actual Pi value. For anyone looking to trade Pi, knowing whether they’re dealing with a genuine token or an IOU is crucial.

The numbers, in May 2026

To put all of this in one place, the verifiable state of Pi Network as of late May 2026:

The price of PI is currently around $0.15, a significant drop from its peak of $2.99 in February 2025. This represents a roughly 95% decrease from its highest value.

Market capitalization: approximately $1.6 billion, ranking around #55 across all cryptocurrencies.

Circulating supply: approximately 10.4 billion PI of a 100 billion maximum supply.

The platform has over 60 million users. As of late 2025/early 2026, around 19 million have completed identity verification (KYC), and about 16 million are actively using the main network, with ongoing upgrades for existing users.

Smart contracts: live on Testnet, activated on Mainnet via Protocol 23 on May 11, 2026.

Pi DEX: targeted for Q2 2026 Mainnet launch.

The Pi ecosystem is growing! The Pi App Studio is now live and allows payments using Mainnet PI. The first version of Pi Launchpad is being tested, and we’ve integrated Chainlink. Developers are actively building decentralized apps (dApps) through the Pi Hackathon and other programs.

The project hasn’t been officially listed on any major, top-tier exchanges yet. However, it is listed on several secondary exchanges, including OKX, Bitget, MEXC, Gate, Bitfinex, and HTX, among others.

What the next twelve months hold

Pi has not been quiet about what is next, and the roadmap is concrete enough to lay out.

Now that smart contracts are officially live on the Mainnet, we’re starting to see the first apps being built on them. Things like Pi DEX, Pi Launchpad, and lending platforms are appearing as the next step. How useful these apps become, and how quickly, will depend on how many developers start building with them and the improvements the Pi Core Team makes based on feedback from the Testnet.

We’re continuing to improve our ‘Know Your Customer’ process, including testing biometric identification and offering rewards to validators. This is all aimed at getting more of our registered users actively participating on the main network.

Another key shift for the project is focusing on providing verified human data for AI. If Pi can successfully turn this data into a product – perhaps by verifying data for other crypto projects, creating a secure identity system for AI, or something similar – it would fundamentally change what the project offers. However, it’s still uncertain whether the market will recognize the value of this new direction.

Another key factor is getting listed on a major exchange. When Pi Network finally achieves this, it’s expected to significantly improve how easily Pi can be traded and its market value. The timing of this – whether it’s in 2026 or beyond – remains uncertain, as is typical with Pi Network’s development.

Another factor affecting price is the way new tokens are released. As more users verify their identities and join the platform, the number of tokens available increases, while the demand remains limited. This creates ongoing downward pressure on the price, and it won’t be easily fixed, even if things generally improve.

How to read all of this

Pi Network is making steady progress, with a proven track record of development. Significant updates have been implemented, including live smart contracts and a test version of its Launchpad. The Pi Network team recently showcased their work at a major industry event, and the project now boasts a larger and more active user base and a growing ecosystem compared to its initial launch. They’ve also made significant headway in processing the required identity verification for users.

This project is currently trading at 95% below its initial high, hasn’t been listed on major exchanges, and continues to see new supply meet existing demand. This situation supports either interpretation of the current market.

Those who’ve been mining Pi since 2019 have seen real progress in the last fifteen months, including the launch of the Open Mainnet, listings on exchanges, improvements to the core protocol, the introduction of smart contracts, and a growing ecosystem. However, users who haven’t yet completed the migration process have largely faced delays, with their mined Pi currently unavailable due to ongoing KYC verification issues. For those looking to trade Pi, it’s been challenging – the token has a dedicated community and developing ecosystem, but limited trading options, a continuous increase in supply, and uncertainty about future availability on major exchanges.

Celebrating the anniversary of the Open Mainnet is a good time to review how far Pi has come, not as a finish line, but as a way to understand its journey so far. By mid-2026, Pi will be a project several years in the making – one that successfully launched, delivered improvements, maintained a dedicated community even during challenging times, and now faces important questions about getting listed on exchanges, managing its supply, encouraging ecosystem growth, and its shift towards AI infrastructure.

The future of Pi will be shaped by what its community builds now that smart contracts are functioning. This includes whether Pi gets listed on major exchanges and if the system used to verify users can be used for other projects. The basic groundwork is complete, and the Core Team, developers, and early Pi users are actively collaborating to determine what comes next, openly and transparently.

That is what actually happened. The rest is for time to tell.

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2026-05-24 16:47