Pi Network’s Open Mainnet Release Plan Is a Bad Joke: Here’s Why

Key takeaways:

• The Open Mainnet release plan published by the Pi Network team in late December does look good at first glance but includes some deliberately vague wording
• The milestones outlined in the plan seem impossibly hard to reach, which could be what the Pi Network team was actually going for
• In its current state, the Pi Network app generates ad revenue, which seems like a risk-free business model for the core team – why would they risk with the launch of the Open Mainnet?

In late December, the Pi Network team released its highly anticipated plan for the Open Mainnet, which was expected to include clear steps toward the mainnet launch. At first glance, the plan was sensible, as it did outline three broad conditions that must be met should the Open Mainnet launch in 2024. However, a closer look reveals that that’s probably not the case and that the team has no intention of launching the Open Mainnet anytime soon (or at all).

We are pleased to announce that we intend to go to the Open Network period of Mainnet in the year of 2024, IF three specific conditions are met. What are the three conditions, and what does the community need to do to meet them? https://t.co/DknULvG6xT

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) December 27, 2023

For those who don’t know, Pi Network is a cryptocurrency mining app that allows users to collect Pi coins by using the app. Since its launch in 2019, the team behind the project has made numerous claims that the project will eventually leave its “Enclosed Mainnet” state and that the Pi coin will get listed on crypto exchanges, allowing traders to buy and sell PI like they would Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other cryptocurrency.

However, throughout the years, the team has repeatedly been pushing back the Open Mainnet launch date, citing various obstacles that prevented it from keeping its promise.

Fast forward to December 2023, the team finally releases its long-awaited roadmap for 2024. There were several roadmap releases before that, but the so-called Pi Network V2 Roadmap was supposed to be the one that finally showcased a clear path toward the Open Mainnet and the one that would allow PI miners to finally get something in return for the time they spent accumulating PI coins and using the app.

To be fair, the team did note that the roadmap won’t include an exact launch date for the Open Mainnet, but it was supposed to “lay out some concrete pivotal milestones leading up to the Open Mainnet.”

So, did it manage to do so? In my opinion, the answer is a clear ‘no’. But let’s examine things more closely.

Conditions in the Pi Network V2 Roadmap are deliberately vague

The crux of the problem with the new roadmap is the lack of clear and achievable goals, which is coincidentally one of the things we pointed out when we were examining whether Pi Network is legit or not. There are other problems, sure, but I think that the vagueness with which the conditions are set is deliberate, and allows the team to postpone the launch date if they so please easily.

The launch of the Open Mainnet is predicated on the three conditions, which are as follows:

• Condition 1: Finish any Open Network preparation work in technology, product, business and legal following the consistent strategies of Pi Network.
• Condition 2: Achieve the following goals in network KYC, migration and utility creation.
• Condition 3: The absence of an unfavorable external environment which would hinder the success of Open Network.

At first glance, you might think these are sensible conditions. But the real problems hide in the team’s explanations of each of these conditions. The overarching theme here is that the team has worded conditions in such a way that allows them to hold off the launch of the Open Mainnet while saving face.

Follow along to see what I mean.

Problems with Condition 1: Omission of crucial milestones

Sure, every project must ensure that its products work correctly, the legal stuff is taken care of, and that business strategy is streamlined before taking the next step. It’s also expected that not every milestone will be made public. However, basing conditions on such milestones – and doing so publicly without revealing what they are – is not so common. 

Imagine if Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said that the transition to a proof-of-stake model was predicated on the completion of stealth projects that are meant to be revealed at a later time. Even if that were true, it’s hard to imagine he would come out and say it. The Pi Network team, on the other hand, had no problems doing just that:

“The V2 Roadmap also excludes some technical and product milestones due to security reasons or because they relate to stealth projects that are meant to be published later.”

The only reason why they would write something like that is so they can point to it later when the Open Mainnet doesn’t launch in 2024. I might be too pessimistic, but that’s my opinion.

Problems with Condition 2: Unreasonable KYC goals

In a whitepaper released in 2021, the Pi Network team first outlined reaching a critical mass of KYC-verified Pioneers as the prerequisite for the Open Mainnet. In the latest roadmap release, they revealed what that critical mass actually entails:

“KYC and Migration

• 15 million Pioneers have passed KYC including fully and tentatively KYC’ed; and
• 10 million Pioneers have migrated to the Mainnet”

So, 15 million Pioneers have to pass the KYC as a condition for the launch of the Open Mainnet. But here’s a catch – the KYC process has been known to be notoriously slow, with some Pioneers waiting for months and more for their KYC request to go through. And who controls the speed of the KYC process? Well, the Pi Network team, obviously.

Again, if the 15 million requirement is not reached, they can easily say that they would have opened the mainnet if only enough people KYCed. But the problem is that they can deliberately slow down the process, not allowing the critical mass of users to complete their KYC in the first place.

Then there’s another arbitrary requirement in the second condition, 100 “real” apps being Pi Mainnet-ready:

“100 real Pi apps that (1) are on the Mainnet or are Mainnet-ready, (2) comply with the Pi platform policies, (3) solve a true need and bring utility to the Pi ecosystem, and (4) are a distinct application (i.e., not simply an unmodified clone of the demo app or another Pi app).”

What’s to stop the Pi Network team from changing its policies? Also, have you heard of any other cryptocurrency project that not only requires its users to complete KYC for the launch of the mainnet but also sets an arbitrary number of apps as a condition for its launch? Me neither.

As of December 27, 2023, 3.9 million Pioneers have migrated their Pi coins to the mainnet, and “about 40 real Pi apps” were deemed as meeting the requirements, per the Pi Network team.

Problems with Condition 3: Undefined external factors

I’ll just start this section with a quote from the Pi Network team:

“[W]orld events affect currencies, and Pi is no different. While we do not control what happens in the world, we do control our launch and will not jeopardize the community’s hard work and dedication with a reckless move to Open Network.”

Of course, the world is an unpredictable place. A crisis might jeopardize your business venture, inflation might unexpectedly rise and eat at your house savings, and more terrible things can happen – there’s no denying that. But what a weird thing to include in a document summarizing your product roadmap. 

But the team didn’t stop here, they also added:

“These factors include macroeconomic crises, unfavorable legal or regulatory developments, industry uncertainties, pandemics, wars, or any number of unpredictable, uncontrollable, and/or unforeseeable external factors inhospitable to the launch of Open Network.”

From where I sit, this reads like a bad joke. Maybe I’m just cynical, but this sounds like something you would write if you were looking for potential excuses down the road.

Community response

As one would imagine, the community’s response to the roadmap plan was mostly negative. Here are some of the things the users wrote on Twitter. I think these three really hit the nail on the head with their takes:

“These three criteria presented by the CORE TEAM are like a fool’s errand. You just like to stall and collect the real money via Advertising revenue.” @EasyGorchen

“He won’t open it until there are no more pandemics or wars in the globe. Does he not exist in our world?” @CryptoXDElon

“The conditions are impossible and it is not fair. There are people who have been approved for KYC for a month, and people whose documentation has been pending for years.” @Musta_rab_unit

Why is the Pi Network holding off the Open Mainnet?

So, we finally got to the most important question – why is the team holding off the launch of the Open Mainnet? In my opinion, the answer is simple. They have managed to build an incredibly popular app (with more than 50 million downloads globally) that collects ad revenue. 

What exactly do they have to gain by opening the mainnet? They only open themselves up to potential regulatory scrutiny and have to deal with the headache of PI coin trading on exchanges. Since its value would likely plummet compared to its IOU price, most of the community would end up being disappointed, as they would quickly realize that they spent countless hours mining a worthless coin. 

At the moment, PI coin IOUs are trading at about $30, which indicates that there is significant interest in the currency. However, beware that these IOUs are not necessarily exchangeable for real PI coins if they ever do launch.

At the moment, there is no official way to buy and sell PI coins, except through online P2P methods. But these methods often expose traders to potential scams. To their credit, the Pi Network team does promote the use of PI coins through accepted merchants. For example, their recent PiFest event has been quite successful.

For the record, I would very much like it to be proven wrong when it comes to Pi. I hope that the Open Mainnet launches in 2024 and that millions of people who’ve invested their precious time in the project get something in return.