Pi Network Community Project at the Moment

What is the Core Team working on?
We want to give an update on what the Core Team is working on recently. As laid out in the Pi Phase 2 Strategy announced around Pi Day (March 14, 2020), the Core Team focuses on 2 major aspects: value creation through building the Pi Apps platform and decentralization through progress in the Node and Testnet.

Platform API
Node
Scaling Backend

1. For the Platform, the Core Team finished multiple iterations on the Pi apps platform along with its first third-party app, FeverIQ. As some of you might have experienced some kinks in the initial prototypes of the platform, we were able to fix them. For example, in the initial prototypes of the platform, the Pi rewards from FeverIQ were not always reliably remitted to some Pioneers, which was due to a scalability bottleneck, as one account (FeverIQ) needs to transfer Pi to accounts of Pioneers on the scale of millions daily. In the current prototype live in the app, almost no such reward issue has been reported. The Core Team is also working on fine tuning the initial Pi Platform API and creating a testing environment, and we aim to make them available for developers in our community very soon, so that community members can apply to be developers and start building Pi Apps in Q3 of 2020.

2. For the Node, the Core Team is working on enabling the Node interface to turn on the Docker container that runs the blockchain. Technically, it means we’ll swap the current Docker container that can be activated on the node interface for network statistics gathering with a Docker container that runs the consensus algorithm. This will enable us to test run the Testnet with centralized configurations initially and enter the Revision Stage of the Testnet Roadmap. In the meantime, we’re going through a selection process for Supernode and Node candidates. The selection process involves not only the Node statistics analyses but also the exclusion of fake accounts.

We’ve also rolled out a few thousand more KYC slots for Supernode and Node candidates and will continue to roll out more KYC slots (in the order of tens of thousands). So if you’re not selected yet, don’t be discouraged. We’ve not finished selecting yet, and our goal is to enable as many Pioneers as possible who want to serve as a Node or Supernode in Pi Network to do so.

1. In addition to the above two prongs, the Core Team has also spent significant time during the last few weeks on scaling our backend. Scaling our service and optimizing our architecture are an ongoing effort as our network grows and more functionalities are introduced, e.g. the platform. Some of you might have experienced slow service or Lite mode for the past few weeks. Those are the periods when we experienced overload in the backend or when we’re deploying improvements to previous architecture or migrations to a different database structure. In order to minimize service disruptions of the Pi App and improve Pioneer experience during such disruptions, we built and introduced the Lite mode that allows Pioneers to perform the most crucial and basic actions, i.e. login and mine, instead of having complete service outages.

We’re pleased to introduce more exciting updates very soon as we approach the end of Q2. Stay tuned.

Being a Pioneer is getting more and more exciting.