Who Is Chengdiao Fan? Pi Network Co-Founder, Head of Product

Chengdiao Fan is one of Pi Network's two founders, and Pi's site lists her as Head of Product. She holds a Stanford PhD in Anthropological Sciences. On stage at the TOKEN2049 conference in 2025 she announced Pi's token-creation tools, and she argues that tokens should help real products find real users.

Thirteen months after Fan announced token creation for Pi's test network, tokens still hadn't reached the real one, known as mainnet. In early November 2026, Pi's own mainnet node listed no issued tokens, no liquidity pools and no trades. It's a long wait, but Pi's blog posts since that announcement set no date for mainnet tokens to miss.

Chengdiao Fan at a Glance

Chengdiao Fan's Career and Background

Fan finished her PhD in Anthropological Sciences at Stanford University, where her expertise was human behavior and how groups work. Her later research turned to human-computer interaction and social computing, the question of how technology can improve the way people behave and live together. Pi's founder page says those ideas shaped her work at Pi Network.

Two of Fan's Stanford papers from 2017 show that interest in practice. She's second author on both, behind Nicolas Kokkalis, who went on to found Pi with her.

Founder Center let members of a startup accelerator ask the group to vouch for them when they wanted introductions to funders. In a field experiment, that option nearly doubled the odds that a member would make such a request.

MyriadHub was a mail client that reused parts of earlier threads, so one person could hold many personal email conversations at once. Against a standard email survey, it "doubled the recipients' response rate and tripled the number of words in their responses".

Both papers ask what gets real people to respond through software, and you can hear the same question when Fan talks about tokens.

Pi's Open Network launched on 20 February 2025, connecting its blockchain to the outside world. Fan called Pi "nonconformist" at that launch and said a year later that the label still held.

The talk that matters most came at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, where Fan gave a keynote. Pi's post of 30 September 2025 says she announced "live on stage" that token creation and decentralized exchange tools were going onto Testnet, the project's practice network.

The post said "After the testing period, they will be accessible on Mainnet" and added that "Mainnet restricts this functionality for now". That second line is where the wait begins.

Who Created Pi Network?

Chengdiao Fan and Nicolas Kokkalis created Pi Network, and Pi's About page lists only those two under its founders heading. Pi launched on Pi Day, 14 March 2019, as a cryptocurrency you can mine free on a phone.

Pi's own posts call each of them a Pi Network founder. Pi gives Kokkalis the title Head of Technology and Fan the title Head of Product, and the About page says they wanted to put their Stanford PhDs in computer and social sciences to work in the real world. On that description, Fan is the social science half.

What Does Chengdiao Fan Say About Tokens?

Fan says tokens should help real products win real users, and she thinks most of crypto uses them to raise money.

In Pi's anniversary video of February 2026, she said "the ability to issue tokens is an important superpower of Web3, but a core issue in the broader crypto space is the misalignment between token design and real innovation." She said tokens on most other crypto networks "function primarily as tools to raise capital."

Fan's sharpest line goes after trading for its own sake. "If it were only about enabling trading, you could issue a large number of fake or meaningless tokens" is how she put it, adding that trading on them could start immediately.

The fix, in her words, is "utility tokens designed for user acquisition". A project with a working app issues a token to attract users, and those users get it through Pi's launch programs and use it inside the app.

Fan argues this cuts a startup's cost of finding early users. If the product stops being useful, those users can leave, and that keeps the project accountable.

Her case leans on how Pi was built. "Pi never did an ICO", Fan says, using the term for a public token sale. "Pi's Mainnet blockchain is fully KYC'd" is her other point, a claim that its users have cleared know your customer (KYC)identity checks.

Fan's May 2026 talk at Consensus in Miami made the same case under the title "Aligning Web3, AI, and Blockchain for Utility". It's a clean idea, and the catch is that nobody can test it with real money until a token launches.

What Is Pi Launchpad?

Pi Launchpad is Pi's app for launching ecosystem tokens, the tokens projects issue on Pi. Pi calls it the primary way to get quality ones onto mainnet. Pi released the app on Testnet in March 2026, pointing readers to Fan's video for the thinking behind it and to a public request for comment on GitHub for the written design.

A launch works differently from a typical token sale. The project is expected to have a working app first, and the PI that buyers pay goes into a liquidity pool with the new token, so the project doesn't keep it. Pi has also said token creation on mainnet will face further rules favoring real products and a reasonable supply plan.

A liquidity pool is a shared pot of two tokens that you can swap against, and an automated market maker sets the price from how much of each the pot holds.

Pi has run two practice launches using Test-Pi, a coin valid for testing only, and the figures below are Pi's own.

• IRRA was the first test, with over 478,000 participants staking Test-Pi and over 198,000 committing 14.72 million of it.

• SLICE ran in June 2026 with over 242,000 participants committing 15.92 million Test-Pi, and its token was tied to a working game called Slice of Pi.

Committing means putting Test-Pi toward buying the token. Staking was a hold you got back, meant to keep large holders from crowding out small ones. That's two steps to learn. Pi's review of IRRA found that some people struggled with them and that some staked without ever committing. So SLICE put both on one screen.

Has Pi Launchpad Reached Mainnet?

No Launchpad token had reached Pi's mainnet by early November 2026. Mainnet is the live network where PI moves for real and Testnet is the rehearsal copy, so the gap between mainnet and testnet is the gap between a demo and a product.

The zeros come from the network's own public node. Its token and pool counts are a snapshot of that moment, and its trade count covers the chain's whole history. Pi's test network carried about 115,000 issued tokens, nearly all of them under two codes.

Issued tokens means tokens created the standard way on Pi's ledger. A token built as a smart contract wouldn't appear in that count, though Pi put its first smart contract capability on Testnet as late as April 2026.

Mainnet itself is busy. A sample of 5,000 operations from June 2022 to early November 2026 showed PI payments and new accounts, plus funds set aside for others to claim, with no other asset and no contract calls.

Of ecosystem tokens, Fan said in February 2026 that "we are finalizing their implementation on Mainnet". A Pi post from late October 2026 reads "Future Mainnet tokens, once the functionality is released, will be tracked in this BlockExplorer interface as well."

Fan has bet that being picky about which tokens launch beats being quick. So far the bet has produced two busy rehearsals and no live token, and practice money tells you little about what people will do with their own.

Watch for the first real launch. Pi has an online Ecosystem Summit set for mid-November, and its announcement names no token launch.

How to Trade Crypto on Phemex

PI has no perpetual or order-book spot pair on Phemex as of early November 2026. Phemex does run crypto futures on the coins it lists, and the link below goes there. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Chengdiao Fan the owner of Pi Network?

Pi calls her one of two founders, alongside Nicolas Kokkalis, and lists her as Head of Product. Its About page doesn't describe either of them as an owner, so founder is the title you can rely on.

Where did Chengdiao Fan study?

At Stanford University, where she finished a PhD in Anthropological Sciences. Pi's founder page says her later research turned to human-computer interaction and social computing.

Can you use IRRA or SLICE tokens on Mainnet?

No. Pi says its test tokens stay on Testnet and will never go on Mainnet. Test-Pi is limited to testing too, so a balance in any of them is practice.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.