- The Pi network’s App Studio is being described as Pi’s vision of inclusivity, giving everyday users the ability to turn ideas into apps.
- KYC has been a perennial sore point in the Pi community because mainnet migration and token utility require verified identities.
Pi Network’s native token, PI, has taken a hit recently, dropping more than 25% in the past week and stirring concern among both investors and pioneers.
Currently, PI was trading at $0.2639, down 1.39% in the past 24 hours. Its trading volume is up 13% to $55 million, giving the token a market cap of $2.16 billion and keeping it within the top 50 cryptocurrencies.
At a recent meetup in Seoul, co-founders Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan reassured supporters that their focus extends far beyond price charts. Fan emphasized that Pi should be seen as a social network, a developer platform, and a utility-driven ecosystem with long-term potential.
Chengdiao explained,
For me, it’s really the community, you guys here. It’s really moving that we started the project more than seven years ago now. We had the dream, the vision of building Pi, so we started actually at the shopping mall, where we thought one day that we were going to introduce Pi to the first 100 people.
Founders Double Down on Vision
One of the big projects Pi’s team is pushing right now is App Studio, an AI-powered tool designed to let anyone, even those without technical skills, build and launch apps inside the Pi ecosystem. The idea is to give everyday users the chance to turn their ideas into working apps or chatbots without having to write a single line of code.
According to the founders, the response has been strong, with thousands of apps already created in just the first few months.
App Studio is built right into the Pi Browser and ties directly into Pi’s SDK and tools, meaning creators can immediately tap into Pi’s massive community of millions of users. Still, not everyone is impressed.
Some pioneers argue that most of the apps so far are pretty basic, think chatbots, simple games, and pre-made templates, and that the ecosystem still lacks the kind of serious, real-world applications that would make Pi truly stand out.
A persistent challenge for Pi has been its Know Your Customer (KYC) verification process. Despite boasting around 60 million users, only about 14 million are reported to have passed KYC. That leaves tens of millions unable to fully migrate to the mainnet or access wallet features, a critical friction point.
In response, Pi recently rolled out a Fast-Track KYC feature powered by AI that will speed up identity verification and grant access to mainnet wallets more quickly. This new path removes the requirement that a user must first complete 30 mining sessions to apply for KYC.
Speaking on the importance of this step, Fan stated that,
Pi’s KYC process has already enabled 14 million people to get verified, a scale far larger than most networks, but the challenge has always been helping the world understand why this matters and what makes our approach unique.
We highlighted in a report that it’s not an instant ticket to mainnet. Pioneers still have to clear the full KYC process and protocol requirements before shifting balances.
