Pi Network Mainnet Launch Fog: Community Divisions, Can the First Update in 2026 Break the Deadlock?

The controversy over Pi Network’s “mainnet launch” has once again intensified. The community’s core members have firmly refuted rumors that the project officially launched its mainnet in February 2025, emphasizing that it is still in the “testing-focused” stage. Although the project released new developer tools at the beginning of 2026 aimed at simplifying payment integration, the native token Pi Coin’s price continues to stagnate, hovering around $0.21, in stark contrast to the overall crypto market’s recovery trend.

This debate over the definitions of “closed mainnet” and “open mainnet” not only reflects serious trust issues within the community but also highlights the core challenges Pi Network faces as it transitions from a long-term experiment to a truly usable ecosystem: clear communication, technical delivery, and value realization.

Community Split: A Dispute Over the Definition of “Mainnet Launch”

Recently, rumors have been circulating wildly within the crypto community that Pi Network has secretly completed its mainnet launch. However, this claim was quickly met with strong rebuttals from key supporters of the project. Community members like WaeliaM publicly clarified that the so-called “mainnet launch on February 20, 2025” is grossly inaccurate and a serious misinterpretation of the project’s current development stage. They pointed out that, according to the official roadmap, Pi Network’s core tasks remain focused on internal testing, infrastructure stability verification, and ecosystem preparation—far from reaching the decisive, fully open “mainnet” phase. This sudden controversy is not merely a matter of misinformation but deeply reflects the widening gap in understanding between community expectations and project progress over the years.

The root of the dispute lies in vastly different interpretations of what “mainnet launch” means. Pi Network began its “closed mainnet” phase as early as December 2021. During this stage, users could transfer tokens within internal wallets after completing KYC verification and use test applications within the ecosystem. However, crucially, the network was not connected to the external blockchain world, and tokens could not be freely withdrawn to mainstream CEXs for trading. The project team defines this as an early form of “mainnet,” intended to cultivate the ecosystem in a controlled environment. Critics, however, argue that a network that restricts asset free flow and lacks broad interoperability, when labeled as “mainnet,” is misleading. It leads millions of “pioneers” to believe that their PI tokens have full market liquidity. This fundamental difference in definition has become the breeding ground for subsequent ambiguities.

Further complicating matters, market activities outside official channels have added to the confusion. Despite no change in technical status, early 2025 saw a surge in unofficial peer-to-peer Pi trading activities, briefly boosting off-market quotes before sharply retreating. Some interpret these price fluctuations as signals that “mainnet is live and value discovery has begun,” even though the development team repeatedly emphasizes that the ecosystem remains in a controlled rollout stage. This phenomenon reveals an awkward reality: in the absence of clear, official value channels, community sentiment and off-market noise have become the main narratives shaping perceptions of project progress, inevitably fueling misinformation and eroding trust. Ultimately, the community has split into two factions: one insisting “follow the roadmap and avoid rushing,” and another believing “existing transactions and practical functions mean it’s mature.” This division is a concentrated outbreak of trust issues left over from Pi Network’s early mobile mining phase.

Ecosystem Building: 2026’s First Update Focused on Payment Integration and Developer Experience

While the community continues to argue over the “mainnet” definition, Pi Network’s core development team appears to be steadily advancing at their own pace. At the start of 2026, the project released its first major update of the year, not focusing on the eagerly awaited “open mainnet” timeline, but rather on a more pragmatic goal: lowering development barriers and enriching the application ecosystem. The team launched a new developer library, claiming it can reduce Pi Coin payment integration to under ten minutes. This move clearly aims to attract more developers to build practical, usable applications before the full open mainnet, laying a solid foundation for a “utility-driven ecosystem.”

Pi Network 2026 First Update Core Content

New Tools: Launch of a new developer library integrating Pi SDK and backend APIs.

Main Goal: Reduce Pi Coin payment integration process to within 10 minutes.

Supported Tech Stack:

• Frontend: JavaScript or React
• Backend: Next.js and Ruby on Rails (initial support)

Strategic Intent: Enable developers to focus on product innovation and accelerate the deployment of Pi Coin practical applications.

Token Market Performance:

• Current PI price: approximately $0.21
• Recent price movements: no significant changes on daily, weekly, or monthly charts
• Daily unlock volume: about 4.5 million Pi Coins (occasionally peaking at 5.5 million)

This update demonstrates a certain maturity in technical strategy. It packages payment-related SDKs and backend interfaces into a simplified setup, aiming to eliminate complex configurations faced by developers when integrating Pi Coin payments. The project team explained in their blog that simplifying payment integration is intended to allow developers to devote more time to product creation and optimization, aligning with their long-term strategy—to build a “practical, usable, and ready-for-real-world adoption” Pi ecosystem. Initially, support will include common tech stacks like JavaScript, React, Next.js, and Ruby on Rails, ensuring rapid coverage of a large existing developer base. However, an unavoidable question remains: in the “closed mainnet” environment, how large can the real transaction scenarios and user scale of these Pi Coin-integrated applications truly be? This remains a vision on the blueprint.

Contrasting sharply with the seemingly proactive development efforts is the extremely weak market performance of Pi Coin. At the start of 2026, the crypto market generally rebounded, with many altcoins posting double-digit gains, but Pi Coin’s price remained stagnant, oscillating below $0.22, currently around $0.21, with no meaningful directional movement on daily, weekly, or monthly charts. Meanwhile, on-chain data shows that the daily unlock volume over the next 30 days remains steady at about 4.5 million coins, occasionally peaking at 5.5 million, which could add selling pressure unpredictably. This “progress in development, no price response” divergence deeply reflects market pessimism toward Pi Network: until substantial transfer restrictions are lifted and assets can flow freely, any ecosystem news struggles to support the token’s value effectively. The market is voting with its feet, demanding more fundamental progress.

What is Pi Network: From Mobile Mining Experiment to a Long Transition to Mainnet

For outsiders or new entrants, Pi Network’s current situation may be confusing. To understand the current chaos, one must trace its unique origins and development path. What is Pi Network? It started in 2019 as a project aimed at popularizing cryptocurrency through low-energy “mining” (more accurately, participation in consensus) via mobile devices. Users simply tap a button daily to earn free Pi Coin. This extremely low participation barrier quickly accumulated over tens of millions of registered users worldwide, called “pioneers.” However, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other mining-then-issue projects, Pi Network designed a long, multi-phase roadmap, with its tokens initially completely illiquid.

The token economic model and roadmap are the root of all controversy. The project roughly divides into three phases: the first is the “mining” period, where users earn tokens for free; the second is the current “closed mainnet” phase, where tokens can be transferred within internal wallets after KYC, and used in test applications, but cannot connect to external blockchains or exchanges; the third is the final “open mainnet,” when the network will be fully decentralized, and tokens can be freely traded and transferred. This design is well-intentioned: before full openness, filtering real users via KYC to prevent Sybil attacks, and building the ecosystem in a controlled environment to avoid premature token release causing price crashes. However, the prolonged “closed” period—lasting years—has led hundreds of millions of users to accumulate vast amounts of “assets” that are nominally present but cannot be realized, inevitably breeding frustration, off-market trading chaos, and suspicion of the project’s intentions.

Therefore, all current confusion about “mainnet launch” is essentially a legacy of this long “closed mainnet” transition phase. Part of the community views the activation of the “closed mainnet” as the start of the mainnet, while others insist that only reaching the “open” state counts. The project’s inconsistent communication, sometimes vague, sometimes emphasizing long-term vision, further deepens this divide. Understanding Pi Network fundamentally hinges on recognizing that it is not a traditional blockchain project but an unprecedented social experiment on how to gradually onboard a massive, zero-cost user base into a functional crypto network. The success of this experiment depends not only on technology but also on precise understanding of community psychology and strict fulfillment of promises.

The Future of Pi Network: Challenges of Credibility, Regulation, and Genuine Value Creation

Standing at the beginning of 2026, Pi Network faces a critical crossroads. On one side is a large, impatient, and divided community; on the other, the still-developing technology and ecosystem. The future trajectory depends on how well it can address several fundamental challenges.

The most urgent is credibility repair and clear communication. Ongoing contradictions about the mainnet status continue to erode the project’s remaining trust capital. Confusing messages not only leave community users at a loss but may also attract regulatory scrutiny. For a project with tens of millions of global users, if it is found to have engaged in misleading promotion or disguised securities issuance, the consequences could be disastrous. Therefore, the project must adopt more transparent, consistent communication than ever before, clearly defining each milestone, supported by indisputable technical facts, and aligning community expectations with reality.

Second is the pressure of real-world value creation. Regardless of how “closed mainnet” is described, an unavoidable question remains: what truly supports the value of PI tokens? Currently, their value is entirely maintained by community expectations of future “practicality” after “opening,” but these expectations are waning over time. The new developer tools launched in 2026 are a step in the right direction, but they must generate applications genuinely needed by users and capable of creating real trading demand, not just “toys” within the network. The quality and quantity of ecological applications will be key to whether Pi Network can evolve from a social experiment into a vibrant economy. Otherwise, even if the “open mainnet” is eventually realized, the market that welcomes it may collapse quickly due to lack of real utility.

For millions of Pi Network participants and observers, the current advice may be to exercise cautious patience and lower unrealistic short-term expectations. Investors should recognize that until a clear “open mainnet” and asset disposal plan are announced, any off-market trading involves high risks and uncertainties. Viewing Pi Network as a long-term, experimental participation with significant failure risks rather than a guaranteed investment opportunity is a more rational mindset. The ultimate answer does not lie in social media disputes or short-term price fluctuations but in whether the core team can, in the coming months, push forward with solid technical progress, execute a clear roadmap, and deliver convincing ecosystem results to rebuild consensus and cross this final, most difficult hurdle. Time is no longer on the side of ambiguity and waiting.