Stanford graduate develops cryptocurrency for smartphone users to increase its accessibility.

Review: Time goes back to 16/09/2019, The Stanford Daily "Stanford Daily" wrote an exclusive interview article for Pi Network!

The four core members of the Pi Network team are all from Stanford University.

By Siddhant Gupta on September 16, 2019

Although the Pi Network has more than 500,000 users as of this year, its goal is to make smartphones accessible to all. Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis '13, Dr. Chengdiao Fan '14, Vince McPhilip MBA '18 and visiting student researcher Aurélien Schiltz launched the network on March 14.

People often rely on third parties to guarantee safe and secure financial transactions. Typically, the third party is a bank or service (such as PayPal), which costs consumers money and often limits transactions. The purpose of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is to remove the need for third parties and their rules or fees, thereby making financial transactions freer and beneficial to both parties. Bitcoin was one of the inspirations for the Pi Network, which set out to reimagine Bitcoin as a social, mobile-first currency.

“Cryptocurrencies and blockchain have the potential to decentralize financial and legal services in the same way that the Internet decentralizes information and media,” Fan wrote. “Unfortunately, in its current state, most cryptocurrencies are still unable to derive the most from the technology. Everyday people who benefit from it.”

Pi aims to enable people from all walks of life to contribute to the security of cryptocurrencies and the success of their communities. The team believes that this principle of excellence, along with Pi's inclusivity, is making it the most widely used cryptocurrency in the world.

"We are committed to a cause to unlock human potential," the team wrote in a statement to The Daily. "We are drawn to blockchain's potential to achieve this on a global scale."

When members vouch for each other's trustworthiness, Pi does not rely on the energy-intensive algorithm used by Bitcoin to authenticate users, but instead protects its ledger. By using a social "safety circle" rather than a rigid algorithm, the Pi can be used via a free app on a typical smartphone. These interconnected "circles of security" create a global trust graph showing who can be trusted to record transactions. This approach allows users to contribute to cryptocurrency mining directly from their mobile phones by leveraging their existing social connections, with no financial cost, minimal battery consumption and a smaller footprint on the planet.

Although Stanford did not provide any resources for the project, Pi's founders noted that much of this was dictated by the team's experience at Stanford, including input from Stanford faculty such as computer science professors Michael Bernstein and David Mazieres ) for advice and interaction with Professor Jan Liphardt of Bioengineering.

When Kokkalis taught CS 359B: "Distributed Applications on Blockchains" in Spring 2018, Fan helped organize the lecture and Schiltz was a teaching assistant for the class. In the process, the group wrote, they saw blockchains that were inaccessible to mainstream audiences, and the difficulties decentralized application developers had in attracting users. McPhilippe added that his experience building the Stanford Blockchain Collective has proven to him that many don’t see the importance of blockchain.

Liphardt, a professor of bioengineering, believes that there may be applications of blockchain in healthcare, identity and law, such as storing and processing medical data more efficiently. Liphardt works with Kokkalis on Stanford's Distributed Trust Initiative, which focuses on understanding the possible real-world uses of blockchain and related technologies.

"No matter how good your technology is, if people can't use it, it won't make much difference," Liphardt told The Daily News. "What's notable about the Pi team is their focus on usability and widespread adoption – they're working on it. Make the technology easy to use and are exploring ways to motivate people to keep using it."

The team members wrote that their shared goal of making cryptocurrencies more accessible and their diverse backgrounds allowed them to bring the concept to life.

At the end of Kokkalis' post-doctorate with Bernstein, he and the rest of the team began researching how to make blockchain accessible to mainstream audiences, especially as it pertains to human-computer interaction. They meet regularly, starting with work on low-fidelity and software prototypes.

"HCI is all about identifying unstated needs and assumptions in the computing systems we inhabit, and rapidly iterating to find solutions," Bernstein writes. "Furthermore, our research provides deep insights into how to design systems that encourage massive online participation. Thinking... In a sense, I see this project as a combination of his original research interests in distributed systems and his [Nicholas] recent Ph.D. D. and a postdoc in HCI and social computing. "

Fan believes that building the world's most widely distributed and widely used cryptocurrency is a multi-faceted problem involving distributed systems, cryptography, economics, law, politics and social sciences. She believes that Stanford's interdisciplinary collaboration and approach will provide the talent needed to realize this vision.

“I like to joke that an anthropologist, two computer scientists, and a businessman walked into a bar and asked, 'How do we bring the power of cryptocurrency to ordinary people?' Then we all decided to start a company together , and finally launched the Pi Network on Pi Day 2019," McPhillip wrote.

The Pi project is currently in Phase 1, and as stated on the project's website, the team is also looking for students to help with distributed systems, back-end and front-end development, social scientists, economists, and businessmen.

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