One of the factors that led many people to trust the Pi Network project and actively mine the Pi Coin cryptocurrency is the profile of the project’s founders. Notably among them is the project’s technical leader, Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis, who is regarded as the “soul” of this project.
This is due to his impressive technological achievements at Stanford University. According to the biography of Mr. Kokkalis posted on the Pi Network website (minepi.com), during the early stages of his doctoral work, he created a framework for writing “smart contracts” on fault-tolerant distributed systems, even before blockchain and Ethereum were born.
The three individuals considered as the founders of Pi Network are Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis – technical leader (right), Dr. Chengdiao Fan – product leader (in the middle), and Vincent McPhillip – community leader of Pi Network (left).
Additionally, he also created the online gaming platform Gameyola and StartX, a startup accelerator at Stanford University from 2010 to 2018, before he embarked on the Pi Network project – a cryptocurrency and peer-to-peer network to which he pledged to dedicate his “100% professional commitment” while his “beloved wife and son dedicate 100% of my personal commitment” to him.
“The Father” Does Not Know His “Child”
However, it is astonishing that a project that occupies “100% of Kokkalis’s professional commitment” does not appear in his LinkedIn profile – the world’s leading social network for businesses and professionals with over 200 million members. This profile is even more important for a PhD scientist like Mr. Kokkalis. Meanwhile, less significant projects like Gameyola or StartX are still mentioned by Mr. Kokkalis in his LinkedIn profile.
If Mr. Kokkalis is indeed the founder of the Pi Network project and committed 100% of his career to it, could he have forgotten to mention it in the most important professional profile of his?
If Mr. Kokkalis’s LinkedIn profile is not trustworthy (it’s a virtual environment, after all!) – take a look at Dr. Kokkalis’s achievements posted by Stanford University – where he studied and worked. Similar to his LinkedIn profile, his marks at Gameyola and StartX are mentioned, but not a single line refers to the Pi Network project!!
An interesting detail, Mr. Kokkalis’s biography on Stanford’s website also mentions his Twitter account at: twitter.com/nkokkalis. This account was created in October 2008, with its last activity being a tweet posted in early 2013. And like his profiles on LinkedIn and Stanford, not a word mentions the Pi Network project or its technology.
In contrast to this account is another Twitter account at: twitter.com/drkokkalis, with the same avatar of Mr. Kokkalis but the cover photo and tweets contain much information about the Pi Network project. In one tweet from this account, there is a link to the nkokkalis Twitter account, claiming that it is his old account.
However, this drkokkalis account was only set up recently, in March 2020, and the most recent tweet from this account was also from April 2020 – more than a month after it was created.
Furthermore, this account was set up more than a year after the Pi Network project began. The Pi Network app started appearing on the Google Play Store from December 2018, while the project was officially launched on March 14, 2020.
This raises a question: if he is truly the “father” and passionate about the Pi Network project as described, could Mr. Kokkalis neglect his social media account and not update the project’s status for so long?
Besides the technical leader of the Pi Network project, another prominent name in this project is Dr. Chengdiao Fan, the product leader. There is not much achievement listed about this doctor, but like Mr. Kokkalis, Dr. Fan’s LinkedIn profile does not mention Pi Network at all.
A Twitter account named Chengdiao Fan created in 2010 also contains no tweets or information regarding the Pi Network project.
The Most Passionate Person is No Longer in the Project
The final founder among these individuals is Vincent McPhilip, the community leader of Pi Network. Unlike the two aforementioned “founders”, McPhilip is very active in posting information about this project on his profiles, both on LinkedIn and Twitter. However, in his LinkedIn profile, Mr. McPhilip only states his title as “Former Community Leader” of this project.
On the official website of the Pi Network project, the name Vincent McPhilip is not mentioned in the introduction about the project’s team.
Aside from the loose connections on social media between these three founders, perhaps the only evidence showing their relationship is a photo of the three together – a harmless photo that does not reveal their contributions to the establishment of this world-renowned project.
It is hard to believe that the founders of a famous cryptocurrency project like Pi Network have such strange profiles. This raises doubts about whether they actually founded or participated in this project. Can a project like Pi Network be trusted when 2 out of its 3 founders do not even mention it in their profiles?