Pi Network is a social cryptocurrency and developer platform that (1) allows mobile users to mine Pi coins without draining battery or harming the environment and (2) fosters the world’s most accessible and ubiquitous apps platform where developers can offer users real life utilities and products in exchange for Pi coins.

With its 35+ million engaged user base and novel mining mechanism that allows anyone to mine Pi straight from their smartphones, Pi Network strives to bring real power back to the masses. Pi’s blockchain secures not only transactions via a mobile meritocracy system but also a full Web 3.0 experience where community developers can build decentralized applications (dApps) for millions of users.

Pi Network is founded by Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis and Dr. Chengdiao Fan—two Stanford PhD’s in computational engineering and social sciences.

Dr. Kokkalis, in addition to developing/founding several startups and human-centered technologies in the past, teaches Stanford’s computer science class, Decentralized Applications on Blockchain.

Dr. Fan, receiving her PhD in computational anthropology, has also worked as a founding developer of several startups and projects around scaling social communications and surfacing untapped social capital for people everywhere.

Both are strong and long term believers of the technical, financial and social potential of cryptocurrencies, but frustrated by their current limitations. To resolve traditional blockchains’ shortcomings, they employ a user-centric design philosophy that turns the development process of new blockchains upside down.

Pi’s blockchain uses an adaptation of the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP)—an instantiation of the Federated Byzantine Agreement—to validate transactions.

Compared to traditional blockchain mining methods like Proof-of-Work or -Stake, Pi’s protocol uniquely provides decentralized control, low latency, flexible trust and asymptotic security at a fraction of the environmental cost. In short, fault tolerance is achieved through a decentralized web of nodes reaching consensus via a trust network of mobile users who validate their daily presence and vouch for others’ authenticity in the network to earn Pi. Environmental impact is vastly lowered since this method does not require energy-intensive hardware to mine.

Pi Network’s robust ecosystem design is built on an intuitive and transparent model, facilitating Pi coins as a medium of exchange without token concentration. Key tenets include fair distribution (everyone mines at the same rate), scarcity (the mining rate decreases as more people join), and meritocracy (rewards are distributed based on contributions to the network).

Pi Network’s developer platform also offers numerous qualities that may interest developers. As the world’s largest identity-authenticated userbase, Pi Network has pre-built infrastructures such as a crypto wallet, user authentication, notifications, deep linking, app interoperability and many other functionalities in the pipeline. Its App Engine uses an operating system similar to Apple’s iOS, with a secure blockchain component. Community developers can incorporate Pi’s SDK and user-authentication measures into their apps, enabling Pioneers to seamlessly integrate into the Pi ecosystem and move back and forth between different interoperable apps without logging in separately or providing other contact information.