Hi, Pioneers! To celebrate the Pi2Day, Pi is excited to launch the new Pi Apps Utilities Platform, Pi Developer Portal, and Pi Hackathon.
Community developers will now be able to begin building and testing applications on the Pi Platform for millions of users to use.
Let's look at the project overview and significance:
Pi is a global cryptocurrency with high transaction throughput, providing instant global financial settlements.
On top of this utility, Pi Network seeks to self-actualize
by providing value through a decentralized network of programmatic utilities (apps)
that use the Pi blockchain as a medium of exchange to transact goods and services.
The new Pi Utilities Platform is built as the infrastructure to that end,
connecting to the Pi Testnet blockchain in the backend (and eventually the Mainnet) and with Pi Browser’s user accessibility in the frontend.
Let's look at the Pi Utilities Platform
Pi apps are implemented as web-apps that run inside the Pi
Browser. With the current SDK, Pioneers can make Test-Pi payments to third-party apps and
vice versa. A Pi payment is always initiated and permitted at the computing device of the sender,
be it an individual Pioneer or a third-party app, and that's because it’s the sender who must sign it with
their own private key in order for the transaction to be valid. Third-party Pi apps can request a Pioneer to pay them Pi for goods and
services through the Pi Wallet. And they can do that with a simple JavaScript call using the Pi JavaScript SDK.
Pioneers pay by signing the transaction through their Pi Wallet,
and third-party Pi apps can also send Pi to Pioneers by signing their transactions through their developer wallet on their own servers.
Let's see how this works. Pioneers can visit a third-party app.
They have to go the the address of the website through Pi Browser.
When they are ready to purchase something on that app, they can tap on the pay-in-Pi button,
and that will redirect them to the Pi Wallet’s address wallet.pi, where they can access their own wallet and approve the payment by themselves.
After the payment is successfully registered on the Pi blockchain,
they will be redirected back to the address of the third-party app to proceed and continue.
Now, note that all transactions occurring on the current platform use only Test-Pi,
and that's because the SDKs and Pi Apps payment flows are connected with the Pi Testnet blockchain.
Our goal is to iterate and improve the Platform and its Pi Applications with the community
so that they will be compatible with the Mainnet and ready to go once it launches.
For ecosystem app developers to focus on developing Pi utilities and features without worrying about scalability and server costs,
we built standardized development and deployment resources —
For example, there is a standardized, specialized Kubernetes cluster with all the accompanying docker containers.
Ecosystem apps developers can upload their apps directly onto the Pi’s cluster of thousands of server CPUs,
and ready to run. We will release more information with details about this resource very soon.
Let's talk about the Developer Portal.
Launched a few weeks ago, the Pi Network's new Developer Portal
allows community developers to register for credentials to access the Pi Platform APIs
and to create third-party Pi apps on the Pi Testnet.
Through the Developer Portal, Developers can access different resources and perform compliance check-ins in the future.
For announcements, iterative communications and developer community management,
we are also launching a dedicated Discord server for developers to connect and build Pi together.
The Discord server will provide educational resources, AMAs and community events dedicated to help the developer community build the next-generation of Pi Apps.
To be invited to the discord server, developers will need to pass a developer quiz to be verified as a developer
or participate in the Hackathon.
So, if you belong to one of these categories, please wait for our invitation inside our Pi app.
To kick off our developer community’s launch,
Pi Network is announcing the start of our new Pi Hackathon today!
The #Build-Pi-2gether Hackathon is a collaborative event where Pioneers & developers join together to build the future of Pi.
We will be hosting the Hackathon over 7 weeks from June 28th until August 10th.
There are two categories of apps to build: Business apps - Apps that serve a consumer or commerce product.
And Ecosystem apps - Functional apps that better the ecosystem and functionality of the network.
The Hackathon will also offer some prizes.
There will be $100,000 USD and 100,000 Pi that will be offered as prizes for top teams or projects that meet the criteria.
For each category of apps (Ecosystem & Business apps), there will be different prizes
And each category will have 1st prize = US$20,000 + 20,000 Pi
2nd prize = US$15,000 + 15,000 Pi 3rd prize = US$10,000 + 10,000 Pi
Honorary mentions (5 winners) = US$1000 + 1,000 Pi each
In Total, there will be up to US$100,000 and 100,000 Pi that will be given in prizes.
Selected judges and the Pioneer community will evaluate completed projects,
and the Pi Core Team will decide winners based on these ratings.
To participate in the hackathon, visit the Pi Brainstorm app.
Overall, the Pi Hackathon will help foster the decentralized development of Pi’s ecosystem on the Pi Platform,
leveraging the power of our global community to achieve the breadth and scale of traditional economies,
where real value and utilities are created.
Pioneers, let’s #BuildPi2gether!!!