Pi Network (PI) announced that it has surpassed 18 million verified users, stating that this is a significant advantage over networks that only measure growth by the number of wallets.
A post from the Pi Development Team emphasizes that identity verification is a necessary condition for all value transfer transactions.
How Pi verifies 18 million identities.
Pi's in-app KYC system combines human verifiers and AI technology to aid in fraud detection . Over 1 million verifiers have performed 526 million checks to verify approximately 18 million independent identities.
Each submitted application undergoes approximately 30 separate checks before being approved.
Recently, the Pi Network completed its first validation reward distribution , awarding a total of 26.5 million PI to participants. On Medium , validators received approximately 0.05 PI per task – 22 times faster than the typical PI mining rate.
Pi Network (PI) price performance. Source: BeInCryptoAt the time of writing, PI is trading around $0.17, up 3.43% on the day. According to CoinGecko data, its market Capital currently stands at $1.75 billion.
Backlogs and KYC issues remain a major problem for now.
Despite reaching this significant milestone, many Pi members – or Pioneers – are still "stuck" in a waiting state. Nearly 44 million people were in a "temporary" KYC status, meaning their profiles needed further XEM before they could access the full Mainnet .
"At this rate, it will probably be another 10 years before anyone receives their PI," commented one Pioneer.
Some users reported waiting for verification for over two years without success. In other cases, they lost all their accumulated coins because the KYC deadline passed before their applications were processed.
To address this, Pi implemented the FastTrack option and an automated verification system , successfully verifying an additional 3.36 million Pioneers.
"If eligible, users will see this feature right in the Pi Wallet app, allowing them to begin KYC verification and, upon successful completion, immediately access the Mainnet wallet and other features," a representative from the development team wrote on the blog .
Although over 16 million accounts have completed the Mainnet migration, there is still a significant gap between verified accounts and accounts that have fully migrated.
Whether Pi's strategy of prioritizing identity verification will truly win over more users depends on how quickly it resolves the backlog of applications – a problem that is frustrating many loyal users.
