Broken promises, tardy progress turn users away from Pi crypto

An account holder named Hoang Phuong posted in a Facebook group with over 200,000 members in late June: "I have lost faith in the Pi Core Team. For those who still play, good luck. I'm deleting the app."

Many users agreed.

Thanh Huy wrote in a comment under the post: "I also deleted the app from my phone. Six years is too long for a cryptocurrency project."

Vi Anh wrote: "Other projects with the same model have been on the market for a long time, while Pi continues to remain an empty promise. The Pi Core Team just wants to make money from advertisements."

On June 28 the Pi team reported having 60 million users, with 12 million successfully completing their identity verification (KYC), up from 9.45 million on March 14.

The team reiterated the requirements for an "open mainnet" -- where users can trade Pi with other cryptocurrencies -- like completing the open network in terms of technology, product, business, and legal aspects for Pi and achieve the KYC goal.

But it said it would take a long time to achieve those requirements.

"We control the Open Network launch date. That lets us avoid launching at a time when global factors might harm crypto and traditional business ecosystems. While we don't anticipate any such events currently, we won't ignore them, either. We will work to ensure our launch is timed for the best results for the network," it said in the June 28 announcement.

The platform also introduced a feature to lock Pi in the mainnet wallet for several months and longer.

On social media, many see this as a "stalling" tactic by the team.

Meanwhile, what they most look forward to - being able to trade Pi with other cryptocurrencies - has not yet become possible.

In fact, over the past year the Pi Core Team made a minor adjustment in the application.

But Nicolas Kokkalis, considered the brain behind the Pi Network project, has not appeared in the media for over three years.

Data from SimilarWeb, an international software development and data aggregation company specializing in web analytics, web traffic and performance, shows that in June Vietnamese were only fourth in the number of visitors to minepi.com, down from their consistent first or second rank for years and a 46% decline in three months.

Nevertheless, there are still those who say they continue to support the project, as the Pi Core Team made another promise when saying that "Pi2Day 2024 [which means March 14, 2024] marks an essential milestone for Pi Network—it’s the last Pi2Day before we launch Open Network!"

A user, Huy Tin, wrote on Facebook: "Pi Network is a long-term project. I believe this year would be the last for us to wait for the open mainnet."

The Pi Network was launched in 2019 and advertised as allowing users to own the Pi cryptocurrency for free by checking the app daily.

Millions of users are still waiting patiently, saying they do not lose anything by doing so.

Dang Minh Tuan, a blockchain expert, pointed out however: "Users will lose personal data such as name and phone number, waste time and phone resources, exert efforts to recruit others, and may lose additional information on their devices."

In June 2023 the Ministry of Public Security said it had coordinated with local police to investigate the cryptocurrency.

According to a ministry spokesperson, it showed signs of recruiting people in a binary, multi-level marketing model, and so they should be cautious about being lured into high-profit cryptocurrency schemes.