Pi Network News: Pi Network Encourages Holiday Shopping With Pi Payments

Pi Network launches a holiday commerce initiative promoting real-world Pi payments, merchant adoption, and Mainnet usage growth during peak shopping season.

Pi Network has launched a Holiday Commerce Initiative to promote real usage over speculative price discussion. Instead, the project focuses on everyday Pi payments at the holiday shopping season. The initiative is to encourage spending online and in stores. As a result, the Pi Network sets out to reinforce its utility-first narrative that it established long ago.

Pi Network Pushes Merchant Adoption and Real Usage

The program is connecting Pioneers with local merchants and approved applications on Mainnet commerce that are already accepting Pi payment. Users can spend Pi directly at participating stores or via integrated apps. Even more, there are merchants who are offering holiday discounts targeted at Pi users. This structure redirects focus on transactional engagement as opposed to token incentives.

Pi Core Team confirmed the initiative involves community-led commerce events, discounts and prize-based engagement. These efforts are to increase the frequency of transactions and the visibility of the merchants. Thousands of merchants around the world have used “We Accept Pi Payment Here!” signage. Additionally, things like PiFest are ongoing to support localized Pi-based commerce.

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The Pi payments are based on direct wallet-to-wallet payments within the Pi ecosystem. Users scan QR codes from merchants or send Pi to verified addresses. Transactions usually process at a fast speed without intermediate complexity. Therefore, the flow of payments resembles the type of simple peer to peer transfers familiar for most network participants.

Pi Network’s Open Mainnet was available in February 2025, which allows for external connectivity and limited exchange listings. There are now platform of operators like OKX and Bitget where PI pairs are available. However, the core team still controls nodes running validators. Consequently, there are under-discussion issues of regulatory scrutiny and concerns over decentralization.

Based on market data, Pi has traded around $0.21 as of December 21, 2025. The token has increased more than 1% in the past 24 hours. Total market capitalization is close to $1.77 billion. Nevertheless, analysts emphasize that long-term appraisal relies on ecosystem development and wider adoption.

On-Chain Activity Signals Growing Mainnet Engagement

Contributors had more than 1.2 million Pi moving from exchanges to self-custody wallets in a single day. Such outflows as exchange are often the sign of long holding behavior. However, based on the trend, users intend to go beyond short-term trading.

Wallet-level data provides analysis on users’ positioning Pi for spending and ecosystem participation. This behavior is consistent with the growing usage of the Mainnet applications and merchant integrations to the Mainnet. Moreover, there is a reduced exchange balance, which can limit the liquidity of speculation. As a result, transactional demand could be more significant in the price discovery of the future.

Despite increased activity, the long-term prognosis of Pi is not clear. The project is carried on with a referral-based growth mode,l which attracts both adoption and criticism. In addition, there are still relevant data privacy considerations for users. Analysts suggest caution in tracking network transparency and governance evolution.

Supporters maintain that commerce-oriented efforts separate Pi from hype-filled crypto projects. In this way, by focusing on utility, Pi is trying to create durable network effects. However, the control of validators is centralized, which limits trustless verification by some critics. So growth in adoption must accompany improvements in structural decentralization.

Looking ahead, Pi Network intends to continue Mainnet functionality expansion through 2026. Merchant tools/ payment integrations/ application development continues to be a priority With this comes the fact that holiday commerce is a live test when it comes to scalability in the real world. Market participants continue watching to see if usage is translated into sustained economic value.