Happy Pi Day

In celebration of Pi Day, the Core Team is presenting a few Product and Tech announcements and updates that are important milestones to the project and that Pioneers care about. Pi Day is the time for us to reflect on what we have built and achieved and also the time to look forward.

Pi Wallet

We announce today that Pi Wallet that connects with Pi Testnet will be launched to Pioneers on March 31, 2021. As mentioned in an earlier wallet update, the Core Team has spent the past few months to design, develop and iterate on multiple versions of the wallet with moderators and nodes, in pursuit of a functional, scalable, hopefully easy-to-use wallet for all Pioneers.

Pi Wallet will enable Pioneers to create Key-pairs (Public and Secret Keys) and store the secret keys safely on your phone locally, in a non-custodial way. At the current stage, The Pi Wallet will be connected to Pi Testnet and initiated with Test-Pi by the Pi Testnet faucet, which is a facility on the Testnet to distribute free Test-Pi. With the wallet, Pioneers will be able to send and receive Test-Pi on Testnet, just as if how it would work eventually on Pi's Mainnet with real Pi. Of course, the same iterative design process will apply to our wallet which means improvements will be made along the way after the release on March 31 and feedback from all Pioneers is welcome.

We want to emphasize that Test-Pi (or test-π) is NOT REAL Pi! Test-Pi is solely for the purpose of testing transactions on the Pi Testnet and contains NO VALUE. The Test-Pi balance in the wallet may be reset because Testnet will be periodically reset as part of the testing. Please remember that currently sales of Pi are unauthorized and violate the terms of service, which may result in freezing the account. Please report violators.

Node and Testnet update

As the Core Team has committed to launching the Pi Mainnet by the end of the year, the work on Node and Testnet is the most crucial to that end. For the past few months, we have made tremendous efforts to progress on the node software, Testnet, infrastructure and scalability.

We released multiple versions of the Pi desktop software, with the latest one being v0.4.3. There are currently over 140,000 live installations of the Pi Node active every single day. Based on their availability and reliability metrics, we have enrolled about 10,000 node applicants to follow the blockchain and run the Pi consensus container. With about 10,000 functional active nodes, the Pi Testnet is already one of the largest peer to peer networks in the world. This also means that we are one step further on our path to a more decentralized Mainnet that is aimed to launch by the end of this year.

There has also been much work done for infrastructure. To enable the Pi Wallet to transact Test-Pi on the Testnet, the Core Team created the faucet and established connectivity of the wallet with the Testnet blockchain. Community members have created a block explorer and a node network dashboard as user-friendly interfaces to view the blockchain and nodes network. Moreover, all items listed above involve much work on scalability, given the size of our network.

KYC

We just announced as part of the Pi Day celebration that additional 100,000 free KYC slots are provided by the Core Team to selected Pioneers all over the world to bootstrap the Pi economy. In addition, the Core Team has started working technically and logistically on the community-driven KYC solutions proposed in the Brainstorm app for the mass majority of Pioneers, in the hope to achieve low-to-no cost KYC solutions for all real human Pioneers. So if you have not received a KYC slot yet, please be patient.

Pi Utilities Platform

The Core Team launched the Brainstorm app in the hope that Pioneers collectively propose new Pi App ideas, and form or join teams to make these ideas a reality. So far, we have received 33,367 proposals of Pi Apps. Due to the sheer amount of proposals, we also released a two-step blind review mechanism with the help of small groups of Pioneers to bubble up the best and more feasible proposals that provide concrete implementation plans. Currently, the second step of the blind review is finished for previous submissions and new proposals can continue to be submitted. Soon we will publish the initial selection of ecosystem app proposals for the whole community to view, join and support.

In addition to the utilities side, the Core Team has also been designing and developing a new and more open user interface for the Pi utilities platform that we hope will better serve the ecosystem building. More concrete updates on the new platform tailored to Pi utilities and ecosystem will be announced on March 31.

Chat features

The Core Team has been working on improvements to the chats to address spam and trolls and foster more meaningful conversations among Pioneers. Today we also released a chat feature to a few specific chats and topics - Decentralized Moderation that allows senior Pioneers of the chat to flag any spam and troll messages of newer members, e.g. spam bots. A threshold of such flags would make the message disappear from the chat, and the sender of this message can appeal in case of any unfair flagging. The appeal can be approved or rejected by chat Moderators. False flagging in case of moderators approving the sender's appeal would result in suspension of the senior Pioneer's ability to flag messages as a measure to prevent malicious flagging of good messages. This feature is meant to empower most Pioneers to help protect and maintain the health of our chat rooms.

Conclusion

It has been an amazing, challenging and fulfilling year that we had together building Pi since last Pi Day. To all Pioneers all over the world, the Core Team appreciates your trust in the project and the Core Team in spite of the noises in the world, your efforts in growing our network, supporting the Testnet, defending the project and bootstrapping the Pi economy, your caring about the progress of the project, the health of our community and the Core Team, and your creativity in Pi utilities, ecosystem building and Pi art. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. We are feeling lucky to have you along the way with us overcoming one difficulty after another. The Core Team cannot promise success, but commits to trying our best to build and lead the project along with all Pioneers around the world toward its vision - an inclusive global digital economy.