❓😃❓ Do you know? Pi Network once had a “demo version”

The “demo version” we’re talking about here is not Pi’s mining app or a blockchain testnet. Instead, it was a series of research projects carried out at Stanford University, by Pi Network’s two co-founders, Nicolas Kokkalis and Dr. Chengdiao Fan, in the years leading up to Pi Network’s official launch.

While browsing more information about the two founders, I happened to come across their profiles on DBLP (Digital Bibliography & Library Project).

DBLP is one of the most respected bibliographic databases in the field of computer science worldwide. It’s not a scientific journal—it’s an academic index that includes researchers, conference papers, journal publications, and academic works.

What surprised me was…

When I traced Nicolas and Chengdiao’s research history, I noticed their ideas had evolved in a remarkably logical way:

🔹 2012: Research on using AI and crowdsourcing to help people complete tasks more efficiently.

🔹 2013: Research on enabling large-scale human communication while preserving personal interactions.

🔹 2017: Research on using social capital to turn social networks and relationships into meaningful value.

🔹 2019: Pi Network launched, with a vision to build a digital economy powered by millions of participants.

What I find especially interesting is that none of these research projects focused on Bitcoin, Ethereum, or blockchain itself.

Instead, the core questions of their academic work were:

How do millions of people connect, collaborate, and jointly create value?

From this perspective, blockchain seems like a tool they adopted later to realize that vision, rather than the starting point of their research journey.
#pinetwork