First published 21 February 2025, the day after Pi Network removed the firewall around its chain. Expanded in October 2026 so a balance in the phone app is not described as a coin you can already send, and so 100 billion is not described as the float. Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan started the project. The mobile app opened on 14 March 2019. The app credits an account when the person opens it. The project calls that mining. It is not the lottery Bitcoin uses, where someone burns electricity to win the next block. What is Bitcoin, in plain language? is that lottery. This page will not describe the taps.
The chain itself started on 28 December 2021, in a state the project called enclosed. It was live, and it was firewalled. The project’s own rule in that period was that Pi could not be exchanged for money or for other coins. A balance you could see was a balance inside that fence. On 20 February 2025, at 08:00 UTC, the project said the fence came down. That is the day an outside wallet or an exchange could talk to the chain. Before that day, a market that claimed to sell Pi was not selling a withdrawal from this chain.
The phone figure is not the chain balance
Moving a balance onto the chain is a migration the project runs, and it asks for an identity check first. The check is their gate. It is not a rule of the ledger the way a signature is. A number on the phone is an estimate until that migration lands. The project has said the figure in the app can be a pessimistic estimate of what the first migration includes. The chain is the balance. The app is a screen until the coins are there. An exchange balance, once a venue lists the coin, is an IOU, not a wallet.
The published ceiling is 100 billion. The split they publish is 65 percent for the community credits, 10 percent for a foundation reserve, 5 percent for liquidity, and 20 percent for the core team. Those other slices are written to grow in proportion to the community credits that have actually been migrated. The supply that exists is that smaller figure. A price times 100 billion counts coins that have not been issued. A lockup the app offered is a lock. Staking is a lock and a queue, not a savings account.
What is Stellar (XLM)? is the ledger whose agreement method the project says it adapted. Pi is not Stellar. An address on one will not receive a transfer aimed at the other. The wrong network is still the wrong city. A site that says claim Pi, and asks for a recovery phrase, is not the app. A wallet signature is not a handshake. Nothing here is an instruction to open the app, to pass the identity check, or to buy PI.
