Pi Network co-founders Dr. Chengdiao Fan and Nicolas Kokkalis took the stage at Consensus 2026 in Miami, addressing a crowd of over 20,000 attendees with a vision centered on the convergence of AI, Web3, and blockchain. Fan emphasized the project’s KYC-verified base of over 50 million users as a foundation for practical AI-driven applications, while Kokkalis focused on restoring trust through secure digital identity without compromising privacy.
The Pi Core Team is also sponsoring the dedicated AI track at the conference, with an opening session questioning the framework for agentic payments. The panel features experts from Coinbase, Virtuals, KiteAI, and Cloudflare, moderated by Carole House of Penumbra Strategies. This sponsorship positions Pi Network at the center of the AI-blockchain dialogue just days before its Protocol 23 upgrade activates on May 11.
Amid the conference buzz, PI price rose 2.94% to $0.185 in the past 24 hours, slightly outperforming the broader market’s 2.07% gain. The approaching smart contract upgrade, which follows the project’s open mainnet launch in February 2025 and the activation of over 10 billion PI tokens on-chain, is seen as a key catalyst for the ecosystem’s expansion into real-world utility.
