The Inflation Problem #Pi Network Doesn’t Talk About
The issue of inflation is something the Pi Network doesn’t seem to address. Determining the historical supply of Pi is challenging, as this information has never been made available. However, a BSCN article from August 2023 indicates that 1.97 billion Pi had migrated to Mainnet by that time, with 1.29 billion locked by users (Figure 2).
As of Sept. 26, 2024, a total of 4.07 billion Pi had been migrated, with 1.35 billion remaining locked, according to Pi Door. This reflects a 106.6% increase in supply in a little more than a year.
By Jan. 9, 2025, ExplorePi showed 5.56 billion Pi migrated, with 659.88 million locked. This means supply grew by another 36.61% in just three months.
That level of inflation is devastatingly high. Inflation at this rate ensures that value won’t be sustained, which is ironic given the Pi whitepaper’s strong criticism of Bitcoin’s perceived shortcomings.
Pi positions itself as a superior peer-to-peer electronic cash system, yet Bitcoin’s inflation rate stands at just 0.8% annually. The closest comparison to Pi’s inflation might be Worldcoin, which saw a 261% increase in supply from September 2023 to September 2024 (Figure 4).
From another perspective, one could argue that migration isn’t true inflation since it involves moving existing tokens rather than minting new ones. However, the real issue is that supply keeps increasing even before the launch. To understand the liquidity situation better, we can examine the locked and unlocked supply figures on ExplorePi.
According to ExplorePi, as of December 2024, 4.17 billion Pi were locked by users, while 843.72 million remained available as unlocked supply. Compared to December 2023, when 2.04 billion was locked,
