Since there is a time difference, I used the DeepL translation site to translate the PIDAY announcement posted around noon on March 15th, not March 14th in Japan. If you find translation troublesome, please refer to this.
Information about KYC, which is the biggest concern for those currently mining, has also been released. It is said that everyone will be able to apply for KYC, and new accounts will be able to apply through the Tentative KYC program. This program prevents fake and bot accounts and ensures network integrity by performing additional checks and verifying account identity. It is written that this is important for people who mine fairly. I’m curious about what kind of program it will be, but I’m more concerned about how long it will take to pass, not just apply.
Although not written in this announcement, it seems that the number of miners has increased to 45 million before I knew it. It doesn’t seem to be popular in Japan, but a meetup was held in Osaka the other day, and it seems to be gradually gaining momentum. I hope that meetups will be held in various parts of Japan and the number of friends will increase.
If you haven’t started Pinetwork yet, this article explains it, so please join us.
https://pinetwork.masters-all.com/start/
Translation starts below
Hello Pioneers, today is Pi Day! Since launching Pi Network 4 years ago, we have celebrated the incredible achievements contributed by both the community and the Core Team. In this past year alone, Pi Network achieved an innovative mass KYC solution to onboard millions of Pioneers at scale, implemented a new dynamic mining mechanism that follows Pi’s meritocratic principles within the supply limit, migrated millions of KYC’ed Pioneers onto the Mainnet blockchain, and enabled the Pi platform on Mainnet along with releasing many useful developer APIs and tools for ecosystem building.
These efforts, along with many other improvements for the Pi ecosystem and infrastructure, contributed to the great productivity and progress this past year. Despite recent unfavorable news and difficulties in the overall crypto and blockchain industry, our network continued to grow and reached over 45 million Engaged Pioneers distributed across the world. The Core Team and Pioneers together have communicated and executed on shared priorities to build a project that reflects our common goal of a more fair and decentralized network built on Pi. However, there is still a lot more work to be done.
Moving forward, we highlight what the Pi Network (Core Team, Pioneers, and community developers) can do together to achieve the key goals of the Enclosed Network.
Mass verify the identity of millions of Pioneers through a native and scalable KYC solution, and subsequently migrate their mobile mining balances to the Pi Mainnet.
Creating Real Utility for the Cryptocurrency Pi through the Pi Ecosystem
The goals of the Enclosed Network are prerequisites to reaching the Open Network, as described in the December 2021 Whitepaper. Achieving the Enclosed Network goals requires every member of the Pi community.
This Pi Day announcement is intended not only to inform but also to galvanize more collective efforts. It also features specific guidance on how Pioneers can contribute to the Pi Network and make more diverse and decentralized efforts to achieve the Enclosed Network goals faster, under the theme “What I do for Pi”.
Core Team Efforts
The backbone of Pi is its Pioneers. To empower tens of millions of Pioneers, the Core Team has continued to build, guide, and coordinate the necessary network components for Pioneers to grow, collaborate, unleash their potential, showcase their talents, and contribute diversely to the shared vision of Pi. Pi’s core mining mechanism speaks to the essence of this utilitarian process by the collective efforts of the large Pi community and the true meaning of decentralization—a combination of decentralized efforts and widely distributed rewards.
During the current Enclosed Network period, the Core Team has continued building the infrastructure and necessary features for Pioneers to achieve two goals. In addition to the achievements of this past year, today we are announcing exciting new releases to further empower the community.
Today’s announcement only covers the main new features and recent releases. More detailed product and technical updates that the Core Team has been working on for the past three months will be provided around the end of this quarter.
KYC for All!
We have already provided mass KYC such that the majority of the network can apply for KYC at any time, and now we are opening up KYC applications to all Pioneers.
Many of the newly eligible accounts will be able to apply for KYC through the Tentative KYC program. This means that unlike the regular KYC process, Tentative KYC applications will undergo additional checks after submitting documents and passing Validator review before obtaining a “Pass” status. These additional checks will combine newly submitted information to further verify identity. The Tentative KYC program gives accounts with more complex properties an opportunity to proceed with KYC and prove they are real humans, while being cautious about granting the “Pass” status.
The reason for this rollout of KYC eligibility and the selective Tentative KYC program is to ensure the integrity of the network. We are cautiously allowing as many real human Pioneers as possible to pass KYC, while catching and preventing as many fake and bot accounts as possible. This is not only important for the network, but also fair to all human Pioneers who have been honestly mining on their accounts.
New Testnet Ecosystem Interface with Testnet Apps
We are announcing a new interface for accessing Testnet apps in the Pi Browser, the Testnet Ecosystem. The current Testnet Ecosystem interface provides a preview of the Mainnet Ecosystem and is a central hub for selected apps and utilities based on Mainnet app criteria.
Through the Testnet Ecosystem interface, Pioneers can explore Pi apps within the Pi ecosystem, and community developers can publish their Pi apps to Pioneers to test, iterate, and build full-fledged apps. This feature is currently rolling out and will be accessible soon. These Testnet apps will be accessible to everyone in the Testnet Ecosystem in the sense that they are “allowed but removed if violated”.
This means that because these apps only connect to the Pi Testnet, they will be allowed in the Testnet Ecosystem by minimum initial criteria to maximize open collaboration and visibility in community utility building. However, since these apps have not been carefully reviewed and vetted, Pioneers should use them at their own discretion, assuming they are still under development and may be removed if violations by these apps are reported and verified. The apps available in the Testnet Ecosystem are not guaranteed to be available to Pioneers in the Mainnet Ecosystem, which will adopt different selection criteria and procedures.
On the one hand, developers have the incentive to improve the quality of their apps to increase their eligibility for the Mainnet Ecosystem, and on the other hand, Pioneers will increase their engagement with the ecosystem as the quality and quantity of apps grow.
Pi Network has strongly emphasized utility creation in the past few months through various hackathons and developer initiatives. The Testnet Ecosystem interface is a great step towards connecting Pioneers with the growing number of useful, interesting, and fun apps. These apps are for you. We hope you will use these apps, provide feedback to the app developers, contribute to the improvement of the apps, and hopefully find these apps enjoyable or useful.
Notify Your Team to Start KYC and Migration
We are rolling out a new feature that allows Pioneers to share a message with their Referral Team and Security Circle members to remind and encourage them to start their own KYC and migration process. This feature promotes decentralized efforts to accelerate the network’s progress in KYC and migration, bringing us closer to the Open Network.
Recent Pi Developer Resources
The Core Team has made multiple improvements to developer resources to further support the Enclosed Mainnet goal of creating Pi utility. These efforts are consistent with enabling the Pi platform on Mainnet to support developers from the general community and the recent 2023 Q1 Hackathon ecosystem building.
Two important releases, App to User payments and Developer Wallets, have been released on the Pi Testnet and are available for integration and testing within Community Apps. App to User payments enables payment flows between app developers and members. Developer Wallets have been released on the Testnet as specific wallets for app developers to hold and use Pi for their apps under development. The Core Team and community developers are testing these features to ensure they are safe and reliable. Once this testing is complete, these features are expected to be available on the Pi Mainnet soon.
Furthermore, multiple other developer resources and improvements (such as Developer Portal and Brainstorm updates) have been rolled out to support the overall environment and co-building process by community developers and Pioneers.
Ecosystem Programs
The Core Team is also working on various developer and ecosystem programs aimed at encouraging all Pioneers to build together to create utility on Pi, such as hackathons, PiOS, and developer support. More details about some of these programs will be discussed in later sections of this announcement.
What Community Developers Are Doing
Many community developers have participated in the Pi 2023 Q1 Hackathon, which started in early January and ended on March 5th. The over 360 final projects submitted by Pioneers around the world include various strong use cases such as social media apps, financial apps, marketplaces, games, news apps, and ecosystem apps. All Pioneers can review these hackathon submissions and provide feedback in the Pi Brainstorm app.
The hackathon encouraged community developers to contribute to the growth of the Pi Network and ecosystem by building mobile web apps for Pi that bring real utility to Pioneers. We solicited creative and utility-focused apps that demonstrate the potential of the Pi developer ecosystem. Some of the resulting Pi apps are expected to be accessible soon through the new Testnet Ecosystem interface feature introduced above.
The list of apps to be released soon in the Testnet Ecosystem is not a complete list of all submissions to the hackathon, nor are they fully vetted. Given that many of them are from the hackathon, we encourage you to explore them.
