If you haven’t come across it before, I’d’ like to introduce you to the Pi Network app. Pi Network aims to give everyday people the ability to “mine” cryptocurrency from their smartphones. There‘re currently 8 million users on Pi Network, making it one of the top cryptocurrencies when it comes to the userbase.
Pi Network launched on March 14, 2019 (pi day). The initiative is being spearheaded by Nicolas Kokkalis, who is a Stanford Ph.D. and teaches Decentralized Application on Blockchain classes; Chendiao Fan, who is a Stanford Ph.D. in Computational Anthropology, and Vincent McPhillip, a Yale and Stanford trained social movement builder.
Pi Network’s core team aims to give everyday people the ability to use cryptocurrency on a larger scale and in an eco-friendly way.
How Mobile Mining Works
The Pi Network is a crypto that uses proof-of-work without the need to burn huge amounts of electricity.
Pi uses consensus algorithms and is based on the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) and an algorithm called Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA). You can read more about it in Pi Network’s White Paper.
Instead of burning energy like in Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus algorithm, SCP nodes secure the shared record by vouching for other nodes in the network as trustworthy.
Simply put, you can mine on your phone without draining your battery. It is decentralized in an mobile eco-friendly situation.
To start mining the only thing you have to do is download the Pi Network app from App Store or Google’s Play store. Then, you have to sign up providing your basic info, and by choosing a username for the app.
At this point, you need to complete your real info in the app, in order to withdraw later, because Pi Network uses KYC(Know Your Customer) to verify the identity of the users.
You also have to fill in a referral code. You can find one, as well as the download links for the app, at the bottom of this article.
There are four roles Pi users can play, as Pi miners. Namely:
• Pioneer. A user of the Pi mobile app who is simply confirming that they are not a “robot” on a daily basis. This user validates their presence every time they sign in to the app. They can also open the app to request transactions (e.g. make payment in Pi to another Pioneer)
• Contributor. A user of the Pi mobile app who is contributing by providing a list of pioneers he or she knows and trusts. In aggregate, Pi contributors will build a global trust graph.
• Ambassador. A user of the Pi mobile app who is introducing other users into the Pi network.
• Node. A user who is a pioneer, a contributor using the Pi mobile app, and is also running the Pi node software on their desktop or laptop computer. The Pi node software is the software that runs the core SCP algorithm, taking into account the trust graph information provided by the Contributors.
To put it simply:
• You become a Pioneer as soon as you sign up and start mining at the basic rate. (0.2 π/hour currently)
• You have to press the bolt button every 24 hours to restart the mining session
• You become an Ambassador by inviting more people to the app. Having people signed up using your referral code also increases your mining rate.
• After 3 sessions of mining, you can become a Contributor by adding users to your security circle. This also increases your mining rate.
Once you push the bolt button, you can close the app and the mining continues. The app will ping you once you have to start mining again.