The Pi Network mining mechanism is still in operation but has significantly evolved in form. As of July 2024, the average daily active miners of the mobile mining function reached 28.5 million, a 38% decrease from the peak in 2021. The output rate of a single machine decreased logarithmically with the increase of the user base – the current base rate has dropped to 0.012π/ hour, a 91% decline from 0.13π/ hour in 2020. The number of testnet nodes has exceeded 186,000. After adopting the new Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), the mining energy consumption has dropped from 1.2 kilowatt-hours per day in the early stage to 0.015 kilowatt-hours, with an efficiency increase of 80 times. During the closed operation of the mainnet, miners need to complete KYC verification to retain their earnings. Data from the verification center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, shows that 87.3% of the applicants passed the facial recognition within 48 hours.
The transformation and reshaping of economic models reshape mining incentives. The security circle mechanism increases the mining income of effective contributors by 300%, but it requires connecting five trusted members to form a network topology. The Liquidity Improvement Proposal (LIP-24) sets the mining rate decay function as f(x)=0.0314e^(-0.0000049x) (where x is the number of active miners), and a thermodynamic stop will be triggered when the total reaches 100 billion. At present, 72% of the mining rewards are included in the locked reserve, which needs to be linearly released over 24 months after the mainnet opens. This mechanism has led to a 63% discount in the current currency price of the OTC market in Vietnam (1π≈120,000VND) compared to the mining rewards.
Technological iteration drives the diversification of miners’ roles. Pi Browser v3.2 integrates the distributed storage function, allowing users to obtain additional revenue through idle storage space, with a reward of 0.0007π per GB/ day. The testnet shows that the network capacity of this service has reached 412PB. The light node verification module enables smartphones to participate in transaction confirmation. The measured peak TPS of the Singapore node cluster reached 4,892 transactions per second. The core team announced at the 2024 consensus conference the launch of the GPUMiner development plan, which supports NVIDIA 40 series graphics cards to provide a computing power of 30-170 mH /s, but mining permissions need to be obtained by staking 10,000π.
The compliance process directly affects the conversion of mining assets. The new regulations of the US SEC regarding “pre-mined assets” require project parties to disclose the details of miner allocation, forcing Pi Network to announce a 218 million PI developer fund lock-up plan. The first batch of exchanges approved by the Central Bank of Indonesia only support a daily withdrawal limit of 500π for KYC miners, resulting in a 3.7% trading premium in the Jakarta OTC market. Under the new VARA framework in Dubai, miners are required to undergo AMLD5 identity verification at level three, resulting in the freezing of mining earnings for 22% of accounts that have not completed tax registration.
The real application scenarios empower the mining ecosystem in reverse. 4,600 merchants in Southeast Asia have connected to the pi payment system. The actual transaction fee of 7-Eleven in Thailand is only 0.33π (about 0.003 US dollars), which has stimulated miners’ willingness to hold coins by 19 percentage points. The PiChain Mall platform implements a “consumption mining” mechanism. Each purchase rebate is converted into a 0.8-fold computing power acceleration coefficient, driving the quarterly GMV to exceed 47 million US dollars. Saudi Telecom’s project has incorporated roaming fee settlement into the Pi blockchain, enabling miner nodes to share a 1.8% share of the settlement profits.
The migration to the mainnet constitutes a crucial turning point. During the closed network period, the accumulated balance of miners’ wallets had reached 29.6 billion π, but as of Q2 2024, only 38% had completed the mainnet mapping. The blockchain browser shows that the total number of transactions on the testnet has exceeded 1.9 billion, and the average transaction fee remains at a technical low of 0.001π. The milestone roadmap disclosed by the core technical team on GitHub confirmed that a fully open mainnet needs to achieve 200 active ecosystem application standards, with a current completion rate of 91.5%. The market expects that after the migration is completed, the mining revenue model will shift to staking dividends under the POS consensus, with an annualized yield simulation range of 4-11%. At that time, the role of miners will completely transform into verification nodes.