Pi Day 2025: Looking Back at Pi Network's Biggest Achievements

As a reminder of the achievements made, Pi Network celebrates Pi Day. The Pi Network app was released on March 14 (3/14), 2019, marking the day's celebration. Since then, the network has been experiencing rapid growth. Now that the Open Mainnet is live, this upcoming Pi Day represents a huge milestone in its development. 

Pi Day coincides with the mathematical symbol (3/14 represents π ≈ 3.14159) for context. Apart from being a celebration, this occasion fosters connectivity between the pioneers as they can receive updates, achievements, and their visions for the future. 

As March 14, 2025, draws closer, it is profitable to see how the project has developed from 2019 until now and what the hints for the upcoming celebration from the protocol would be.

The Beginning of Everything - Pi Day 2019

The vision of its founders, Stanford graduates, Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis and Dr. Chengdiao Fan, is to mine cryptocurrency through mobile devices to make it more accessible to the public, bypassing the energy-intensive hardware requirements of projects like Bitcoin. 

The first Pi Day, which is celebrated on March 14, marks Pi Network’s birthday and its launch in 2019. On that day, a three-phase roadmap was laid out along with the Pi Whitepaper. It included Phase I (the deployment of the mobile mining app), Phase II (Testnet phase) and Phase III (the final Mainnet integration). More importantly, users known as Pioneers could mine Pi coins by engaging with the app daily.

While modest at first, this technology was groundbreaking in its ease of use. The mobile app, released as an alpha prototype in December 2018, garnered immense attention when it reached 100,000 users in just a few months. This significant milestone resulted in the first mining rate halved from 1.6 Pi to 0.8 Pi per hour. The app broke barriers when it was announced on Pi Day 2019, fostering a community which has surpassed 60 million registered users by 2025. The app democratized cryptocurrency and set the pace for Pi Network’s goal on inclusivity.

Timeline of Pi Day Milestones

Pi Day 2020: Building the Foundation

By March 14, 2020, the Pi Network had started gaining traction. The Pi App was functional, enabling Pioneers to mine on their phones without any hassles. The community grew beyond the 1 million users mark, which initiated another halving to 0.4 π per hour. This Pi Day was unique because it brought about community programs such as the community slogan and T-shirt design contests, which later augmented Pioneer participation and ownership. The Testnet was still underway, which remained hidden for the time being, as it was more advanced than having a back-end blockchain. The aim was straightforward; expand the community while collecting the early-stage technical building blocks.

Pi Day 2021: Testnet and Ecosystem Growth

With the introduction of the Testnet came Pi's blockchain, which was celebrated on Pi Day 2021. The number of users was more than 10 million, which also led to halving to 0.2 π per hour. For the first time, the network started employing its consensus mechanism, the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), which favored energy efficiency. 

This was an essential stage in demonstrating Pi's technical capability, while the hackathons and developer outreach worked on building an ecosystem of dApps. Users were now invited to contribute their testing and feedback to enhance Pi's philosophy further. The protocol also introduced Pi Art Celebration, allowing pioneers to submit Pi-themed art and get featured in a Pi Day video. 

Pi Day 2022: Inauguration of Enclosed Mainnet

Pi Day 2022 was a significant milestone after the debut of Enclosed Mainnet on December 28, 2021. It allowed a selective phase wherein Pioneers could perform transactions using Pi within a closed environment. KYC (Know Your Customer) verification and Mainnet migration were already underway. 

By mid 2022, over three million Pioneers had migrated and the launch of Mainnet Pi Wallets facilitated users to manage their tokens securely. In 2022, Pi Day signified this shift as the Pi Network stood on the promise of delivering stability and security as groundwork for the forthcoming Open Mainnet. The network also achieved a milestone of more than thirty million users, exemplifying its exponential growth.

Pi Day 2023: Utility and KYC Momentum

Transitioning into Pi Day for 2023, Pi Blockchain Network marked its fourth anniversary, boasting a KYC verified userbase of more than 3.8 million alongside a flourishing ecosystem. With a thriving user base, the community created a video contest while the platform announced mass adoption of KYC, subsequently enabling countless users to migrate to the Mainnet.

Nicolas Kokkalis hinted at tokens of the Open Mainnet expected in late 2024 during Pi Day. Dapps like Pi Chats and commerce pilots started gaining popularity then, as a reminder that the network was maturing from a mining experiment into a well-functioning platform.

Pi Day 2024: The Last Showdown

Pi Day 2024, the fifth anniversary, was marked as “The Last Pi Day Before Open Network.” The network also rolled out technical updates with over 50 million downloads and nearly 10 million KYC’d Pioneers. New products, including the Explainer Pi Ad Network, and posts on X highlighted the community opportunities and a roadmap update, expecting the Open Mainnet for late 2024 or early 2025. In a remarkable achievement, the community's KYC, node, and app-economy participation were praised as primary drivers, thus benefitting the open beta.

Pi Day 2025’s Prelude: The Open Mainnet Era

Like a cherry blossom, Pi Network’s promise bloomed in full on February 20, 2025 at 8:00 AM UTC with the launch of the Open Mainnet, a new milestone ahead of Pi Day that fell under strict anticipation for a long time. The announcement came from Pi Network on February 11, 2025, from their account on the social media platform X, and it came true after fulfilling national milestones comprising of 15 million KYC-verified Pioneers and ten million migrated users of whom a hundred were developers of Mainnet-ready applications. 

The closed firewall was removed, allowing Pi to interact with external blockchain networks and crypto exchanges with confirmed listings on top-tier CEXs such as OKX and MEXC (Binance next?). This shift radically changed Pi from a closed ecosystem to an interoperable cryptocurrency and greatly enhanced decentralization through public node thawing.

As of now March 7, 2025, the network has over 60 million users, and is politically stable post migration. With all these accomplishments, Pi Day 2025 can now be celebrated as the start for a new era and foundation full of aspirations.

Pi Day 2025: What to Expect

Considering the activity on X and historical trends, the festivities of Pi Day on March 14, 2025 will likely be accompanied with a few announcements from the Pi Network. Here’s what we can infer:  

Looking Back on Open Mainnet Achievements

We expect the Pi Network to discuss early performance results in node growth, transaction volumes, and exchange listings, as their Open Mainnet would have been operational for almost a month by Pi Day. The team might also provide details about how Pioneers are spending their Pi coins to help substantiate the network.  

Performance Improvements

New features and functionalities are usually announced on Pi Day. For 2025, new developer tools or blockchain optimizations could be added to reinforce the blockchain ecosystem. Posts have hinted that “these technical advancements will serve as foundational changes” and may include the new developer tools or blockchain optimizations that have yet to be revealed. Recently, some updates have been made to the PiNode reward algorithm that were set in February 2025, and these may also serve as Pi’s “Web 3.0 Era” or increase in traffic.

Long Term Objectives

As for 2025, pioneers can anticipate a roadmap iteration which elaborates on the Open Mainnet scope priorities post-launch: augmenting the dApp ecosystem, increasing merchant usage, and perfecting the tokenomics (mining rewards will once again be reduced at 100 million users and it will tend towards zero at one billion users). 

The community spirit of Pi Day will be captured by hackathons and commerce challenges, which were hallmarks of previous festivities. The protocol might offer a Pi Day 2025 Challenge through the app, motivating pioneers to spend Pi in their locality or develop applications, similar to the 2023 Utility Challenge. 

Since Pi can now be traded, Pi Day 2025 could set its own market direction. The core team may define plans to stabilize the cost of Pi and increase functionalities in the real world, which is essential to retain the network's ever-growing community of over 70 million people. Look out for advances in business KYB (Know Your Business) that allow for capturing traders to be mentioned. 

Challenges and Uncertainties

Like everything else, the Pi Network has faced hardships on its journey. The number of users that the network must verify is enormous, and privacy issues regarding app data collection still exist. In addition, some limited enthusiasm can arise from the lack of merchant adoption. Transparency towards these issues is what Pi Day 2025 will need to focus on to keep the trust of its users.

Conclusion: A Defining Moment

March 14 is a day of commemoration and a milestone for Pi Network. It symbolizes both the past and the future of the project. Looking back at its achievement in 2019, which started with a few Pioneers, the project made some remarkable achievements, milestones being mobile mining accessibility, sustaining a great community, and having an Open Mainnet. 

Sure, there’s still a long way to go, but as we look ahead to 2025, the world will have a global network consisting of millions. As Pi Network celebrates this sixth anniversary, March 14 will serve as a day of reflection, revealing the mining platform’s evolved ambition in the world of crypto as well as redefining its purpose.