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Who is Nicolas Kokkalis really? The brain behind Pi Network
If you follow crypto, you have definitely heard of Pi Network. But do you really know the man behind this ambitious project?
Nicolas Kokkalis, a Greek computer scientist born in 1984, is not a random from the web3. His background speaks for him: graduated from Stanford in 2012 with a PhD in computer science, he specialized in distributed systems and "smart contracts" long before Ethereum made it trendy. At that time, during his thesis, he was already working on the theoretical foundations of what we now call blockchain.
Before Pi: academic success and entrepreneurship
Kokkalis did not wait for Pi to make things happen. In 2009, he received the Facebook Fund award as the CTO of Gameyola Inc., an app that attracted more than 20 million users. At the same time, he co-founded StartX in 2011, a startup accelerator affiliated with Stanford, now valued at over 26 billion dollars.
In 2018, he even taught the first Stanford course on decentralized applications (CS359B) as an adjunct professor. A detail that matters: he knows both theory AND practice.
The Pi project: launched on the symbolic day (14 March 2019)
The Pi Network was born on Pi Day, co-founded by Kokkalis with Chengdiao Fan and Vincent McPhillip. The idea? To democratize access to mining by making it accessible via smartphone, without consuming energy like traditional PoW. Millions of users later, it has become one of the most interesting experiments in mass adoption.
And after?
Forbes ranked him in the 30 Under 30 in 2020 (well, he was 36 years old at the time, a little off 😅). He also sits on the World Economic Forum's expert network, advising on blockchain and DeFi.
The real question: Will Pi Network succeed in its transition to the Open Mainnet? If so, Kokkalis will go down in history as the one who made crypto accessible to the real people. If not, it will be a valuable lesson on the limits of the mobile-first model.
One thing is for sure: this guy has the experience to make things happen.