Palo Alto, CA, June 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pi Network, a massive, open community powered by the world’s most widely distributed cryptocurrency that delivers accessibility and enables a robust ecosystem for members, merchants and developers alike, announced today that the identity verification of over 1 million of its members has been completed using its new native Know Your Customer (KYC) solution, Pi KYC.
Pi KYC is a unique and proprietary approach that combines machine automation and crowdsourced, hyperlocal human verification to accomplish secure, accurate and efficient KYC. It was born out of a lack of scalability, financial accessibility and global reach from other third-party market solutions.
While Pi KYC employs the latest cutting-edge machine automation that tackles tasks such as image processing and fake ID detection, the process is a community collaboration at its core. Human verification is undertaken by peer-vetted and -approved individuals who check the redacted data of other members and are sourced from the KYC’ed members of the Pi community itself. The Pi KYC system now boasts a robust, self-sustaining human validation workforce in 203 countries and regions — areas that represent about 92.6% of the global population. The network is continually expanding its number of human validators and recently surpassed 125,000 daily active validators all across the world validating KYC applications. These KYC validators are now able to verify members’ identities at a rate of over 90,000 people per day. All are compensated in Pi, the native cryptocurrency. In addition to serving the traditional business purposes of KYC, this multi-pronged solution works to prevent individuals from hoarding Pi by creating fake accounts, and upholds the core principles of the Pi cryptocurrency mining mechanism: fairness and meritocracy.
“The requirement for KYC by many decentralized applications and crypto-related products and its financial cost in fiat currencies are barriers to entry in the Web3 and crypto space for a vast majority of ordinary people around the world. Pi’s KYC solution solves this through a scalable, accessible, and ‘home-grown’ solution,” said Dr. Chengdiao Fan, Founder and Head of Product at Pi Network. “Given our cryptocurrency network’s uniquely massive and widely distributed community, a native KYC solution free of fiat cost for all members is one of our great efforts to deliver on our promise of fairness, inclusivity and utility.”
In contrast with other blockchains, Pi Network has been building and growing its community long before publicly launching the Mainnet blockchain. Since March 2019, the community has been making various contributions to the growth and security of the network, and in the process, mining Pi on their mobile phones through a novel, environmentally friendly mining mechanism. The network is now in the process of migrating its members to the mainnet blockchain for which KYC verification is a prerequisite. Migrating the Pi balances from the mobile phone app, where they are currently recorded, to the blockchain, while various apps are also set to transition from testnet to mainnet, will enable the peer-to-peer ecosystem to materialize. These apps will be able to tap into a large network of users who have passed KYC and are crypto-ready with cryptocurrency in hand to spend for various services.
“Pi KYC is a perfect representation of how the entire Pi ecosystem works: a native, decentralized community where labor is exchanged, and real utility created, for Pi cryptocurrency and no fiat is involved,” said Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis, Founder and Head of Technology at Pi Network. “The scalability of our KYC solution performs as expected by its design. This spectacular speed and wide geographical coverage of KYC processing power as well as the rapid scaling to meet KYC demands are demonstrations of the decentralized crowd power of the global Pi community.
With crowd efforts of the whole network, members and validators, the Pi KYC solution will enable Pi Network to create the largest KYC’d and crypto-enabled social network in the world, making it the most socially equipped ecosystem for the Web3 era and ready for the development and deployment of future financial services and Web3 applications.
To join Pi Network, visit minepi.com.
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ABOUT PI NETWORK
Pi delivers on the true promise of blockchain: a massive, open community powered by the world’s most widely distributed cryptocurrency that delivers accessibility and enables a robust ecosystem for members, merchants and developers alike. Founded in 2018 by a team of early innovators in blockchain and social computing, with PhDs from Stanford University, Pi Network is a utilities-based ecosystem for third-party apps on a mobile web platform, with widespread (rather than concentrated) token distribution. The blockchain platform offers a mobile-first mining approach, with low financial cost and a light environmental footprint within the crypto space. The community boasts an engaged 35M+ members in over 230 countries or regions. For more information, please visit minepi.com.
