As a special project in the cryptocurrency field, the potential assessment of Pi requires a combination of multiple dimensions such as technological innovation and market reality. This project adopts a mobile-first mining strategy, claiming that its global registered users have exceeded 45 million, with an average of about 10 million active mining users per day. This user base far exceeds that of most early cryptocurrency projects. Its consensus mechanism is based on a variant of the Federal Byzantine Protocol (FBA), with energy consumption being only 0.1% of Bitcoin mining. The theoretical transaction processing speed can reach 1000TPS, far exceeding Bitcoin’s 7TPS. However, these data only reflect the scale of user growth, rather than the actual value of the network.
From the perspective of the technical implementation progress, the Pi mainnet has remained in the closed network stage since its launch in December 2021. Compared with the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade (which took three years to complete the proof-of-stake conversion), the release time of Pi’s open mainnet has been delayed by more than 24 months. On-chain data shows that the current number of PIs mapped to the mainnet accounts for approximately 15% of the theoretical total of 80 billion, and among the approximately 100,000 nodes, only 30% meet the continuous online standard. This delay in progress is similar to the technical predicament before the EOS mainnet went live in 2018, which was delayed by half a year due to vulnerability fixes.
There are significant challenges in economic model design. In the distribution mechanism adopted by Pi, the base mining rate has dropped from 1.6π/ hour to 0.1π/ hour, and the decay curve has decreased exponentially. If calculated based on the IOU price of $30 shown on unofficial trading platforms, the fully diluted market value would reach $2.4 trillion, equivalent to 12 times the market value of Bitcoin. Such a valuation lacks support from the real economy. Referring to the TerraLUNA crash case in 2022, its algorithmic stablecoin UST had a market capitalization peak of only 40 billion US dollars before the crash, which had already caused global market turmoil.
Regulatory compliance is its greatest uncertainty factor. The core team of Pi is located in the United States and must comply with the securities regulations of the SEC. If it is determined to be an unregistered securities issuance (referring to the Telegram Gram token case in 2017, which eventually returned 1.2 billion US dollars in financing), it will face significant legal risks. The project party has currently verified over 35 million users through KYC, but this only accounts for 35% of the registered users. Such a completion rate may affect the progress of the mainnet opening.
In terms of ecological construction, the Pi ecosystem currently has approximately 500 applications for development, but there are less than 10 applications with daily active users exceeding 10,000. Compared with the Ethereum ecosystem (where the peak locked value of DeFi reached 100 billion US dollars and the annual trading volume of NFTS was 24 billion US dollars), the Pi ecosystem still needs to prove its practical effectiveness. The concept of “utility engine” proposed by the project party requires at least 36 months of development cycle and relies on the participation of third-party developers.
To sum up, the innovation and user scale demonstrated by the Pi project deserve attention, but there are still significant unresolved issues regarding its technical implementation progress, the rationality of its economic model, and regulatory compliance. Investors should maintain a cautious attitude, regarding it as a high-risk and highly volatile asset. The recommended allocation ratio should not exceed 5% of the cryptocurrency investment portfolio, and they should closely monitor the progress of mainnet opening and regulatory dynamics.