Pi Network Founders Defend Vision as Pi Price Plunges in Late September

Pi Network founders stepped onto a stage in Seoul to remind the community of their long-game vision.

Their debut came even as the Pi Coin price slid by more than 50% in late September.

Pi Network Founders Highlight Achievements Amid Ecosystem Expansion

Nicolas Kokkalis (NK) and Chengdiao Fan (Cfan), co-founders of Pi Network, addressed Korean pioneers at a local meetup.

Pi Founders—Nicolas and Chengdiao—appear for a meet up in Seoul, Korea.

They reaffirmed Pi’s mission to prioritize utility, community growth, and ecosystem development over short-term market volatility.

Fan outlined Pi’s multi-layered identity at the event, presenting it as more than crypto. According to the Pi Network executive, it is a developer platform, social network, and utility-driven ecosystem.

He emphasized the scale Pi has already achieved, citing 60 million engaged mobile users, 350,000 testnet nodes ready for mainnet, and over 14 million users who have completed KYC verification.

“Pi is a lot of things…We are a cryptocurrency, a social network, a developer platform, and a utility-focused ecosystem… Our next stage is continuing to expand the community and ecosystem, emphasizing utility and going beyond,” Fan said.

One of Pi’s newest initiatives is App Studio, an AI-powered tool that enables non-technical users to build and deploy apps within the Pi ecosystem.

Thousands of apps have reportedly already been created in its first three months, and the founders see this as a cornerstone of future growth.

Complementing grassroots creativity, Pi also unveiled Pi Ventures, a $100 million fund designed to back high-potential, disruptive teams aligned with its vision.

Long-Term Vision Over Market Cycles

The founders also urged the community to look past short-term fluctuations. This remark came as they addressed Pi coin’s turbulent token price and widespread speculation about unofficial exchange listings.

In this regard, Kokkalis reflected on Pi’s humble beginnings, when he and Fan struggled to recruit even 54 early adopters in a shopping mall.

“For me, it’s really the community. We started more than seven years ago with just a vision, and despite challenges, we stayed focused on building utility and adoption,” Kokkalis said.

Fan added that true value creation takes time, warning that crypto’s value extraction culture often overshadows the harder task of building real-world use cases.

“Long-termism really needs to kick in. Value creation is always harder than value extraction,” he said.

Tackling Challenges Like KYC, Infrastructure, and Trust

The founders also addressed key community concerns. They clarified that only Pi listed on officially recognized KYB-approved exchanges should be considered legitimate.

The Pi Network executives warned against scams and unauthorized tokens in this regard.

Fan noted that Pi’s unique approach to KYC, which has already onboarded millions without out-of-pocket fees, is critical for ensuring ownership and compliance in a global network.

This observation comes barely a week after the ecosystem eased the KYC bottleneck with a new feature. In hindsight, Pi Network KYC was a contentious issue, with users citing transparency, migration delays, and price volatility, among other concerns.

On infrastructure, Kokkalis acknowledged the technical challenges of scaling to tens of millions of daily users, far beyond the capacity of typical blockchain projects.

Despite market skepticism, the co-founders painted a picture of Pi as a platform positioned for mass adoption, bridging blockchain and AI to deliver practical tools and services.

With grassroots app creation, a major venture fund, and a growing global community, they argue Pi is building a foundation designed to outlast short-term volatility.

“We insist on utility because blockchain networks must produce products that are actually useful and address human needs. That is how real adoption happens,” Fan concluded.

Pi Network (PI) Price Performance. Source:

As of this writing, Pi Network’s token, Pi Coin, was trading for $0.2616, down by almost 4% in the last 24 hours.