🌏젠틀맨🇰🇷

A few thoughts after TOKEN2049 Singapore, following a long journey and finally making my way back home. Quite unexpectedly, I met a Product Owner from Pi Network during the event. I should make one thing clear from the beginning: I am not someone who understands Pi Network deeply. I am writing this simply from the perspective of someone relatively new to it, and I would genuinely welcome corrections or different perspectives from those who have followed the project for longer. I only began looking seriously into Pi Network about a month ago. Nicolas Kokkalis, however, was not a completely unfamiliar name to me. I first came across Nicolas roughly eight years ago, when I happened to attend a panel where he was presenting StarX, the incubator he was working on at the time. To be quite frank, StarX itself did not leave a particularly strong impression on me. What I did remember was Nicolas. He struck me as someone with an unusually deep understanding of distributed systems — arguably among the stronger people in that field at Stanford. Later, I briefly had the opportunity to speak with him during a gathering with mutual acquaintances. It was nothing particularly significant, but I remember people describing him as a rather calm and reserved person: someone who rarely made public statements and was far more comfortable with research than publicity. And that was more or less where the story ended for me. I continued researching AI systems, while he continued on his own path. Until recently. As I began exploring the concepts of free mining, decentralised finance and community-owned digital infrastructure, a surprising number of people told me: “You should study what Nicolas built.” I have never been uncomfortable learning from someone else, regardless of age, background or industry. So I spent about a week studying his project, particularly from the perspective of what lessons might be applicable to the decentralised AI infrastructure we are building. What I discovered was that the problem was considerably more complicated than I had imagined. Building technology is difficult. Building technology for millions of people is considerably more difficult. And building something where millions of people attach financial expectations, emotions and personal hopes to that technology is an entirely different matter. Social media makes this even more complicated. Perhaps this is also why I understand, to some extent, why Nicolas appears to prefer research to constant public communication. And I respect that. Recently, he has found himself at the centre of considerable criticism, particularly around the decline in the price of PI. Some people believe that he is deliberately suppressing the token price, or that he should personally be held responsible for its market performance. I see it somewhat differently. Before Amazon became what it is today, it went through periods when its survival was genuinely questioned. Tesla went through similarly difficult periods. Had every difficult chapter been reduced entirely to the share price — and had every founder been judged solely by short-term market performance — some of the companies we now consider transformative might never have survived long enough to fulfil their ambitions. That does not mean founders should be immune from criticism. Nor does it mean price, tokenomics, transparency or execution do not matter. They absolutely do. But price and vision are not always the same thing. What I find interesting about Nicolas’s original idea is its ambition: to make digital currency accessible without requiring people to begin with significant capital or pass through the traditional barriers associated with acquiring digital assets, while ultimately pursuing a monetary network that is less dependent on conventional financial intermediaries.