Pi Team Freezes All Payments Following Multi-Million Token Theft

The Pi community has pointed out an operation of scamming that has caused innocent users to lose millions of tokens. Therefore, the Pi Network team has paused a vital function concerning payments in wallets.

Pi Network Freezes Payment Requests as Scam Escalates

The Pi team has temporarily disabled its wallet payment request functionality after scammers stole more than 4.4 million Pi tokens through a social engineering attack. According to reports, attackers exploited the transparent nature of blockchain technology to identify and target wallets with large amounts of tokens.

Next, they go ahead to send fake requests for payments to the user for his supposed authorization of transactions. Reports indicate that the transactions have been going from a single wallet address. The wallet is said to have been receiving between 700,000 to 800,000 Pi since July 2025.

Contrary to traditional hacks, this time there was no violation of protocol. Instead, this scam targeted user behavior. From observing wallet balances on the chain, a request for payment was sent to targeted individuals. With authorization received, the subsequent transfer was carried out instantly.

A community lead advised that users resist all kinds of unsolicited requests for payment, whether they seem to be coming from what they think of as familiar contacts or what they believe are official accounts.

Data shared within the community by various blockchain trackers indicates a constant flow of funds into the scam wallet each month.

The dramatic December rise has raised speculations about the operation accelerating now that more people qualify to transfer funds. This circular behavior stinks of targeted behavior, not accidental success, analysts say.

There have been warnings about the fishy transactions taking place on wallets as well. Recently, even a Pi Network mod pointed out one address that had participated in scams involving account unlockings. He claimed that many wallets had been used to distribute the stolen money to make it hard to trace.

This is despite the fact that the team has constantly worked on implementing security upgrades. During March, for users migrating their balance to Mainnet, the platform implemented two-factor authentication.

Ongoing Development Despite Setbacks

This payment freeze comes despite recent progress for Pi Network. There have been updates by the team that have improved migration to Mainnet and verification processes prior to token unlocks that have been set to take place.

Pi has also introduced the use of AI into the KYC verification process, which has seen manual verification reduced by about 50% and helped more users qualify for the Mainnet in a faster manner.

Pi Node version 0.5.4 update has also seen improvements in the performance of the software on the desktop and resolved concerns about the accuracy of rewards on the node.