Pi Network users struggle to recover lost wallets as token gains value

Hong Hoa from central Quang Tri province had been mining Pi since the project's early days, accumulating over 4,000 Pi tokens, with around 1,000 transferred to her mainnet wallet.

By 2023, she stopped "tapping the lightning button" to mine Pi, despite completing Know Your Customer identification verification.

"After some exchanges listed Pi at $2 on Feb. 20, my tokens are now worth around $2,000. But I cannot access my account and have been trying to recover my old wallet passphrase. I am even willing to pay half my Pi holdings as a fee but have not succeeded," she says.

On social media, many early Pi Network users are seeking help to recover their wallet passphrases. Hoang Anh, an administrator of a Facebook group with over 150,000 members, says the group has received more than 20 daily posts on the topic over the past 10 days, though only select cases are approved.

Pi Network logo. Photo from X

"Previously, posts about recovering wallet passphrases were rare. It seems early adopters are reinstalling the app to access their Pi but have forgotten their passwords," he says.

Pi Wallets consist of a public key for transactions and a private key, also known as a "seed phrase"—a randomly generated 24-word sequence that must be securely stored. Unlike standard passwords, losing this phrase means losing access to the wallet permanently. Taking advantage of users’ desperation, various "recovery services" have surfaced online, though experts warn most are scams.

The Hoang, a Pi Network user since 2022, says he attempted to log in using the passphrase he had previously written down but was unsuccessful, possibly due to a single incorrect character.

"I have nearly 800 Pi in my mainnet wallet, so I sought help from a service on Facebook. They quoted a fee of VND5 million (US$196) and asked me to install additional software and share a screen recording of my device," he says. "I suspected a scam and refused."

Vo Do Thang, director of cybersecurity firm Athena, says some Seed Phrase Recovery software exists but typically recovers only one missing word from a seed phrase. If more than one word is forgotten, retrieval is nearly impossible.

Thang warns against online recovery services, noting that current technology makes full recovery extremely difficult. "Users may have to contact the original developers directly, but that is not an easy process," he says. "If seeking external help, they should only trust well-known figures in the crypto community and deposit no more than 5-10% of the agreed amount upfront to minimize financial risk."

Launched in 2019, Pi Network promoted itself as a way for users to mine Pi for free by tapping a button in its mobile app daily. Vietnam is among the countries with the most Pi miners. The project has been controversial, taking nearly six years to launch its mainnet, finally allowing users to transfer Pi to exchanges for trading on Feb. 20.