The Pi Network Core Team's celebratory post marking the first anniversary of its Open Network launch has been met with significant fury from its user base, known as Pioneers. The team's blog post, published a few days ago, outlined pre-launch achievements, emphasizing a six-year ecosystem build-up to ensure "Pi's readiness and sustainable utility." It highlighted the network's design for accessibility, allowing mining "without technical or financial barriers" to foster wide distribution and patience for building a utility-driven ecosystem.
However, this optimistic narrative triggered a strong backlash on social media platform X. Prominent Pioneer YouLong/PiNetwork, with 27,000 followers, challenged the celebration, asking, "What reason is there to celebrate? To celebrate the fact that compliant users have not migrated? Or to celebrate the steady decline in coin prices over the past year since its launch?" This sentiment was widely echoed, with users expressing exhaustion over waiting for a promised second migration, some for five or six years.
The frustration is compounded by the catastrophic price performance of the PI token. Since peaking at $2.99 on February 26, 2025, the token has plunged by approximately 94.5%, trading just above $0.16 at the time of the reports. Over the past 24 hours, it fell another 6%, ranking among the poorest performers. This decline persists despite the anniversary, with the token struggling below $0.165.
In broader market context, Bitcoin (BTC) remained relatively stable around $68,000 over the weekend, showing resilience despite new U.S. tariff announcements. The total cryptocurrency market cap held above $2.4 trillion.
