$PI The Crypto Assets industry is developing at an astonishing speed, with fierce competition between platforms—so what is PiCoreTeam doing?

Centralized exchanges (CEX) have launched a complete "slaughter." For example, Bitfinex has permanently set the fees for spot, leverage, perpetual contracts, and over-the-counter trading to zero. MEXC has also reduced the fees for all spot trading pairs to zero. This is undoubtedly a blatant plunder of users from decentralized exchanges (DEX).

DEX initially competed with "zero platform fees" and decentralization as advantages, but now CEX offers zero fees, high liquidity, and fast execution. The Gas fees and slippage of DEX have instantly turned into disadvantages. This is a huge blow to the entire DeFi ecosystem, and trading volume is likely to further shift towards CEX.

As for Pi Network, its progress still faces old problems: slow and overly focused on "perfectionism".

The development progress of the closed mainnet has been stagnant. PiDEX (the decentralized exchange of Pi) partially opened in February 2025, and now it is nearing the end of the year, yet it is still iterating on the testnet. On December 18, they released the AMM liquidity pool and UI optimizations, focusing on reducing volatility, minimizing slippage, improving price discovery, and some holiday promotions. However, the mainnet version of PiDEX is still nowhere to be seen.

The core team seems determined to refine every feature internally—AMM, liquidity ranking, token creation—while trying to balance ease of use and low fees at the level of centralized exchanges. What’s the result? Innovation can never keep up with the pace of market development, and Pi has thus fallen into the classic "perfectionism trap."

The wave of zero-fee competition from centralized exchanges is undoubtedly a fatal blow to decentralized exchanges. If PiDEX cannot launch its mainnet quickly and open up to global developers (for example: zero platform fees + ultra-low on-chain transaction fees + community-driven liquidity), users will flock away.

Does Pi need to redesign itself to compete in the "zero-fee era"? Perhaps it can learn from CEX models such as negative fees, rebates, or Pi subsidies for gas?

The real balance point is actually very simple: stop working behind closed doors. Open the mainnet as soon as possible, allowing millions of Pi and developers to freely build the ecosystem. This kind of bottom-up explosive growth is far more powerful than any "perfect plan" designed by a small core team.

Otherwise, the drawbacks will far outweigh the benefits, and the window of opportunity will be wasted.

I hope the Pi core team will not delay any longer—don't come back in 2026 with another "Let's wait a bit more and refine it"...

Supplementary explanation:

This slow-paced development model does indeed bring some advantages, but it may also miss out on more opportunities and innovations.