Pi founder Dr Nicolas Kokkalis Interview

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jumping on the CryptoKid podcast. So what's your background and how did you get into cryptocurrency? Hi and thanks for having me. I was actually involved in the space before even the invention of Bitcoin. And that was actually due to my research interest at the university. So on a computer scientist, I did my PhD in Postdoc at Stanford University and my interests are in distributed systems, which

is essentially what the blockchain is, the precursor to blockchain existed many years before. And social computing, which is related to human computer interaction and crowdsourcing. So as part of my master's thesis, I created a framework for writing smart contracts on full-toler and distributed systems. And of course, back then, it wasn't called smart contracts and it wasn't called the blockchain, but it was similar concepts. And then

as part of my postdoc, I introduced and taught a class at Stanford University at the computer science department there. The CS15 and E, which was teaching students how to design decentralized applications on blockchain. And now in this class, students created and deployed multiple functional working prototypes of decentralized applications, but they all got stuck in having people to use them. And that's mostly because many reasons, but

user experience related reasons on blockchain back then. But one core blocking point was that before, anyone can use any of those apps, they needed to acquire cryptocurrency to pay for the gas fees. Now at Stanford is also where I got to meet my other founder of Pi, Danielle Fan, where she also did her PhD there as well. And it's like our academic career and personal interest

that is what truly led to create a pilot work, which we founded at the end of 2018. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. And hey, I got a chance to watch a lecture of your engineers on YouTube. You explained how blockchain technology works. There's just so much to learn about it. And I really appreciate you taking on that challenge and developing young minds to get involved

with the future, especially something that has to do with money governance and law later on down. Yeah, thanks for saying this. I really try when I try to explain something. I try to look at what is the audience. So when I am, I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm teaching to CS students, the audience is more technical. But when I'm trying to explain

something that is for the general population, I'm trying to start from really ground zero. Keep pushing, man. You're doing a great job. Now, we're going to talk about high network. And what is unique about high network compared to other logchains coming out and other cryptocurrencies. What makes you, you guys different? Yeah. So, so high network is essentially a massive open community with over 35 million engaged

members. And this community is powered by Pi, which is the world's most widely distributed cryptocurrency. So this platform that we're putting together is essentially creating a robust, especially accessible ecosystem for three types of people for users, for developers, for developers who are building apps and for merchants who are using apps. And what makes it different? I would say that we follow the number of non-consensus strategies

compared to other cryptocurrencies. Like, for example, we didn't just focus on solving a technical problem. Sometimes you hear things like transactions per second. And then we're going to talk about the same thing. We're going to talk about this and that technical solutions. But we also focused on solving the human problems. So having people engaged, having people on the platform to begin with. Another thing that we

did differently is that we don't our platform is not just focusing on blockchain, native applications and nothing else, meaning like DeFi and FD. Of course, these are possible on Pi. But this is not the only thing that platform is going to be able to do. And the platform is focused on all types of applications that solve needs for mainstream audience. Let me see. Another thing that

we did slightly different here is that we focused on accessibility and inclusivity through essentially trying to reduce any kind of barriers for people to participate, such as financial barriers and technical barriers. And so we don't ask them to pay for anything to acquire Pi. In fact, it's not even possible for someone to do that. You can only mine it on the platform. And technical barriers, they

don't need to be computer scientists or have complicated mining rigs at home that are allowing them to mine. All they need is a mobile phone and participate using. Amazing. Yeah. There's like, so many mining farms out there. And it's crazy how much it can damage the ecosystem. In my opinion, and we definitely need more roof for improvement and protecting the environment. And that's a great way.

And plus, you have a, you have literally have a computer in palm of your hand. So. And more and more people, the phone is so easy to use a kid could navigate it. So that's just, you're going to get like 10 year olds learning how to mine cryptocurrency is. And then then making more money than their parents. It's amazing. So. What is, what will the KS

are KYC solutions help the pioneers? How will it help the pioneers? Ha, so how will it help? And first of all, Pi is a from the beginning, we're building it as a fully compliant platform. We are, we're here where our identities are unknown. And we wanted it to as part of compliance. This services, this networks need to do something called KYC. So KYC is know your

customers stands for, know your customer and it was initially used in traditional businesses. So in this case, in a blockchain, the word customer doesn't make a lot of sense. But again, it's a lot of things that I think is very important. So the need of for KYC is for compliance purposes. And, but also for. The ability to have a more valuable ecosystem. So if you remember

from the maybe what is it now 10 20 years ago when social networks started existing, there was a bunch of some networks before Facebook that were all composed of fake users and fake accounts and every hat and dog had their own. And then the profile on the social network. And then Facebook came along and it was the first one that was saying, no, we want real

users, we want real people, real faces, real names. That was unheard of on the Internet before that, because everybody was still afraid of putting the real name on the Internet. And yet what happened is that it changed, it shifted the whole world's mentality and people started using the Internet for a lot more useful purposes. In the same thing now, we're going to be able to. So,

we're going to be able to. And then the first one was, you know, the first one was the first one, the first one was. Oh, let's use it for anonymity, but that didn't work out very well and it doesn't produce as useful utility as it would have. And. Now the second generation is the one that is. Based on real identity and actually this is how you

can. You're able to create. Okay, why see solution, I'm happy to know your body as well. But. Yeah, I remember when Facebook, when Facebook was out and the way that they would. Weed out the fake users is you have to message like 10 people to make sure that you're actually. It was just like such a process and it was kind of annoying. I was just. I

didn't like it. But when Facebook came out, it was just so much easier and actually better. So I think blockchain is will be. Better in the future and as more people get involved with it and start understanding the technology, you'll see a lot more use cases in it. And. What was I going to say. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And. So why was accessibility and important

factor for developing pie network. Well, accessibility is very important. Um. Any successful currency that wants to support the real ecosystem with utilities relies on a large social network. Cause. In order for you to have. True utility, you need to have many people recognize the cryptocurrency and are able to own it and they are willing to transact goods and services with that currency. So the size of

crypto network essentially needs to. So that's what I wanted to say. And. You also made a great point with the accessibility and. What does this mean for the future of mining on mobile phones. So I think that you. Use it in order for you to have a useful. Um. Cryptocurrency. Uh, you can't think 2009. So Bitcoin was. Great. Because it proved to the world that. Cryptocurrencies

exist. And. It is possible to have a decentralized ledger that is maintaining the. An accurate. Uh, the essentially accurately maintains the balances of different people. Uh, because before that, you would need a centralized bank to tell you what your two balances. And with Bitcoin, we. We. The proof of concept of a decentralized bank essentially is possible. Uh, but. Um, uh, that was. And I. And people

were using computers and it was a little slow. And it had. It's consuming a lot of energy as we all say. And it. It's blocked the. Extend minutes. But, um, into today. You know, if you want to have a. A cryptocurrency that is functional and useful. To. Every day people. It needs to be on mobile. It needs to be more. Uh, faster and more accessible. So.

Answer your question. I think that. Uh, it is the future. The mobile has to be mobile. Mm-hmm. Just like, just like the men of ours. Everyone. You pursued. Do you teach class from home? I. My primary job is building Pi Network. But it just happens that every year, since I left Stanford, I have. Have. Have been invited to. Co-instract. One of the blockchain classes over at

the. Stanford. It's not official, but it just every year, it just happens that they invite me again. So I teach the technical lectures in that class. And other. Um, instructors teach. Non technical aspects. Okay. Okay. I like it. I like it. Now. What are the stages of verification? I know sometimes it can be a little bit complex with. The authenticator. And it can. It can be

kind of tedious. To some people. Some. The stages of. Authentic. Can you. Maybe help me understand your question a little more? Like the. Like, um, how do. How to access the. The cryptocurrencies or their coins. The Pi. Are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah. To like, um, how do I say. To make sure the person that's actually accessing it is actually them. Not. And not some hacker

from across the other side of the world. Yeah. There are two questions here. I guess one is about the user and one of the ones about. Consentious algorithm. I think you're more interested about the user. So. The. So Pi has two levels. So first of all. For the past few years, people have been mining it through a mobile app. So on that mobile app. They have

been accumulating Pi. As, uh, let's say. Um. And, uh, these are not the, these are the tokens that are going to be moved migrated into the minute blockchain and has been migrating. We have actually already migrated over. Uh, two and a half. Something million people into the minute blockchain. So for these two systems, there is a sensitive to different ways of authenticating yourself. So for the

mobile app. Or you can have a Facebook sign in and a few other Apple sign in and a few other ways to, to authenticate yourself. Uh, now for the actual blockchain, which is what happens after UKYC and your balance is migrated from, from the app into the blockchain, the actual blockchain, we use, um, non-castodial wallets. That's the mouthful. But for the audience who, uh, who may

not know what this means, it means that, uh, they, uh, the users will have to remember, uh, pass phrase. And that pass phrase is enough to fully authenticate themselves. And no one else knows that pass phrase. Uh, to the point that, uh, if someone were to hack it theoretically without stealing it from you using a virus, if they were to actually hack it and hack a

set of 56, it would take them 100 billion years to do it using computational, uh, math. So, uh, that's, of course they can try to, to, to, to deceive you to give you, to give them your pass phrase, which is a different problem. It's a user experience problem. But, uh, in terms of, um, cryptography, it's very strong. So essentially, uh, like, um, it's a proper way,

uh, all cryptocurrencies are supposed to do it, uh, is through, um, uh, non-castodial wallets. So the users have to remember this pass phrase. Now because this pass phrase is a little difficult to remember, we, uh, just the users to save it on, um, somewhere safe. And, uh, we help them use the phones, uh, uh, biometric features, such as the thumb print or the facial scan to

essentially load up this pass phrase using their phones, um, algorithms. And there are some phones some, depending on, uh, companies, I guess, uh, you can tell that, uh, uh, these days, uh, uh, most phones are doing a pretty good job, but, uh, securing those, uh, those data. The simplicity of it is very important. And I hope this encourages people to jump into it and not be

afraid of, of memorizing the phrase, just, just get into it. It's not that hard. And the more you, the more you, uh, learn about it, the easier will become. So, the good thing about the pie, if you want me to add this is that, uh, this, the whole ecosystem is built around the program we call the pie browser. So it's like a web browser, but for

pie applications, and you can access the ecosystem there. And one of the applications of this, uh, pie browser is the pie wallet. So essentially we have created a system where, um, the various pie apps can talk to each other and the pie wallet. And they are able, they are able to interconnect. So let's say you are on a gaming app and you want to spend a

few tokens to, uh, continue where you left off. So you, you say I want to do it. You push a button. Then it pulls the pie wallet in front of you. Then you touch your thumb. Uh, it asks you if you are sure that you want to submit this amount of pie to that specific app. Uh, you say yes or no. And then pie is transmitted.

To the app and you are directed back to the set to where you were. And this whole thing connects together, making it as seamless, seamless as possible for the end user. So the, so even though these concepts, cryptocurrencies and, uh, log chain and all these things are very, sometimes could be very complicated for, um, non technical audience. We're trying to make it as simple as possible.

Now would that be the trust graph of working with the ecosystem. Now, the trust graph is something core to our, uh, consensus algorithm. So it's the, the, the way that pie works is, uh, it is sincerely. Cons, creates a trust graph of people who are considered. To be on the main it in a way. And, uh, if you, the, the, the, the, there is a mathematical

proof and the, and the paper that is explaining this, which is about 20 pages long. Uh, but, uh, if you're trying to think of it, very, very intuitively. Uh, if the pie network was just, it wasn't the 35 million people plus we have, but it was just me, you and a couple of your friends. And the way the way it works at pie is that, uh,

we get to select three to five people we know and trust literally from our, uh, contact list. And, uh, this is for us, our security circle and this, this, the combination of all the security circles create the trust graph. So if, uh, essentially, if someone were to come and create 1000 fake accounts, then those fake accounts wouldn't be able to affect the decisions that we make

or where we are, we allocate our trust. Because in order for them to, to modify anything in, in our decisions, they wouldn't need to convince us to stop pointing at each other and start, start pointing at them. Okay. Okay. Now, you have, a robust, um, active member users and that's, it's 35 million plus and that's pretty impressive. I would say, how, how did you, how did

you get that many people involved in into the pie network in itself? Just, I can't breath around it. It's amazing. Yeah. So it's about being clear on the value propositions and, uh, trying to create a true utility, um, trying to provide a safe and fair ecosystem for everyone. So, so essentially, it's about being simple to use, simple to develop, accessible, basically, not no financial or technical

barriers to begin and creating network effects. All right. All right. Now, what is your target audience for pie network? Right. That's a very good question. So I think that in order for us to create anything that is, uh, that achieves mass adoption. And I think that's what the blockchain industry needs as a whole and, uh, we are, we are all would like to collab with, uh,

collaborate on this, uh, in order for the blockchain industry to achieve mass adoption, we shouldn't be only focusing on as one small audience, like one specific segment. Um, we should focus on, uh, everyday people. Um, it's, it's good. And it's easy to get excited. A small group of tech enthusiasts or crypto people. And of course, it's necessary to begin from somewhere. We can begin from there.

But we need to create interfaces that are, uh, uh, accessible by everyone. So I would say, you know, everyone, you've been, uh, uh, our parents and our kids and, uh, believe me, I've been trying, I've been trying my mom and dad just, they think I'm crazy. They really do. They're just like, go get a job, start working. Which I do, I do. But I'm just like,

but this is the future mom and dad, you should get into it, especially what it's like, uh, cheap and it's just they, they can wrap their mind around it. They're just, um, send them a pie invitation code and do the experiment to tell, to tell us if they will manage to do it. Oh, I definitely will send it over and that challenge is on. All right.

So does the bear market clean out the landscape landscape, I mean, that, that's right. Yes. So in the crypto space, there is a lot of noises and also there's a lot of, uh, projects maybe that are in for the wrong reasons, maybe trying to have some quick, uh, effects, uh, without paying attention to long-term value. So it's usually the case that long-term valuable projects are usually

started or, um, basically persevere during low times. Yeah, because anything that gets very quick, uh, results, uh, can also very quickly decay. So we saw some of that in the, in the previous months or the beginning of, of this, uh, period. I agree, I agree. And it just shows who the real enthusiast are. All right. So I personally like the bear market. It's, it's just something

that I like talking more about it when times are bad. Just because I know when times are good, people are just going to be like, Hey, you know, you know, what's sunny or crypto, Kate, you were right or doctor, you were right. If you know, at school or something like, or your peers or somebody that you were trying to convince. So or persuade. There's something I

like to, uh, it's about going to conferences. So when the crypto space is very hot, then you go to conferences and there's so many people there and the, the, the types of conversations, sometimes you're having a very shallow. But when, uh, times are a little more, uh, smaller, uh, then you tend to meet and discuss and have a lot more challenging conversations. Exactly. And you have

to have the answers for them. And sometimes sometimes you don't, because you're just, you're continuously learning about and going into rabbit holes with blockchain technology. And there's just so many use cases like for identity, health care and so much more. Um, what is it? The supply chain too. Hmm. So, uh, pie has done one other thing that is non-consensus. You were asked me about this question

earlier and, and there's so many non-consensus things is we created a concept of enclosed mainnet and open mainnet. So we're currently on the enclosed mainnet, which means that the real blockchain is out there. We are in the process of performing KYC on the members and migrating the their balance is essentially over to the enclosed mainnet. During the closed mainnet period, it is not allowed, uh, to

connect the pie blockchain with any other blockchain or external systems. Um, and during this period, it, it gives us time to do a few things, such as migrating all the members, as I said, over to the mainnet. Uh, continue building utility for the platform. It allows us to have more, uh, developers test their, um, their, their, their. Um, uh, you know, I mean, I don't know.

So this is a, this is an example like for example, our, the KYC solution we created was so one of the. By applications that we built on top of our own platform and in order for someone to, um, to KYC themselves, they need to pay one pie. And that one pie is then distributed to everyone who is, uh, helping with their, their KYC. So there is,

uh, there is both, uh, AI algorithms as with every KYC solution. But when the AI algorithm need help from humans, uh, then these humans are coming from the same network. So it's self bootstrapping itself. And, uh, uh, that's not the case. That's happening even during the enclosed period. Um, yeah. So we are technically the answer is that we are technically on mainnet already. It's called enclosed

mainnet. And at some point we are going to move to the open network. Thank you for clarifying that you answered a lot of questions that I asked for people that have been watching YouTube videos like me and bringing out their curiosity. So definitely appreciate that. Let's ask words before we close. Like what's next, what's next for pie network? Um, so as I mentioned earlier, uh, we

recently announced this KYC solution, which has been has completed more than 3 million members right now have done their KYC. Uh, and that essentially has, is, I think the largest blockchain migration in cryptocurrency history out there. Uh, so, um, going forward, um, we want to continue this KYC migration. We got a lot more members to, to accommodate and migrate to mainnet. So that's one thing. Um,

we need to continue building the ecosystem during the enclosed period. Uh, and that's basically by building more infrastructure needed and enabling utilities to be built by the community itself. Uh, so we are. To this weekend, actually, we are, um, joining three hackathons at, uh, schools, uh, at, uh, Berkeley Harvard and Cornell. Uh, we have some starting tracks over there. So we, we may have some students

building some, uh, pie applications during those, uh, hackathons. And, and initiatives like this for utility building. And, uh, finally, we are also building some utility. So we are also building these ourselves, um, including, uh, on the user side, meaning that end, end user applications, people can use. But also, one of the infrastructure side, such as, uh, we have a brainstorm application where people can go and

brainstorm and create a pie apps. And, uh, and other things like this, such as, uh, we have a, a translation app, which is currently used by, uh, some, uh, translation tax task force that we have for many, many, many, many, many languages, uh, that people from the platform are translating themselves, uh, our interfaces. So in the future, this, uh, internal app that we have, we're going

to make it, uh, public so that the other application developers can also use it to translate their own. applications. Um, that's, uh, that's, uh, it for us, a building, building, building. I'm honored. I'm honored to have you on the show. And it's been a pleasure of mine. I hope you had as much fun as I did on this. And yeah, man, I wish you the best

luck with your endeavors, Dr. And thanks for having me anytime, anytime. All right. So have a good night, sir. You too. Thanks. Bye bye. Bye. Thank you for tuning in the crypto kit podcast. I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. And if you are feeling generous, please help support my channel. You can become a monthly subscriber. In the links down below. Or

you can donate to my Bitcoin wallet. Also in the link down below. Appreciate as much help as possible. And if I don't have a coin, listen on there that you like that your favorite. Let me know. And I'll put the wallet for that only on coin. So thank you so much. And hopefully you'll keep investing in the cryptos and keep rocking the world and conquer everything

that you can.