I recently saw some exciting news from the Pi Network team. Co-founder Dr. Chengdiao Fan will be speaking at Consensus 2026 in Miami — one of the biggest blockchain events in the world. The speech will take place on May 6th, starting at 11:15 AM EDT, at the Convergence Stage.

What’s interesting here is the content of the talk. Dr. Fan will focus on a very important topic — verified data and genuine human participation. As AI increasingly makes building digital products easier, the real competitive advantage now shifts to high-quality data, verified user bases, and trusted communities. That is exactly what Pi Network is building.

Dr. Chengdiao Fan holds a PhD from Stanford, specializing in social computing and human potential. She is co-founder alongside Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis, and from the beginning, Pi Network was designed with a priority on genuine human participation, not bot activity.

This timing is quite meaningful because Protocol 23 (v23.0) — a major upgrade of Pi — will launch on May 18th, just a few days after Consensus. This upgrade is expected to bring broader smart contract capabilities, better scalability, and a solid foundation for real-world applications like Pi DEX.

I also noticed some recent milestones that are quite impressive. Pi Launchpad on testnet has attracted nearly 500,000 pioneers. The first reward distribution for completing KYC has been given to over 1 million people. The public RPC server has also launched, opening doors for developers to test and build. More than 119,000 pioneers have completed their second migration with referral rewards active on the mainnet.

With millions of pioneers worldwide, Dr. Fan’s appearance on this global stage demonstrates Pi’s long-term vision — building a truly decentralized blockchain, operated by people, prioritizing verified identities, trust, and real utility. This event is expected to spark meaningful conversations about how blockchain projects can sustainably grow in the future, guided by AI.