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Pi Network’s Merch Raffle Left 110 Apps and $0.097

After Pi Network’s June 28 merch raffle for vibe coders, SoloHost lists 110 apps, PI closed at $0.097365, and Protocol 27 is due September 15.

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4 months ago

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Pi Network closed its Pi App Studio merch raffle on June 28, 2026, then listed 110 SoloHost apps while PI last closed at $0.097365.

The Core Team had asked Pioneers to pitch the studio to AI builders, also called vibe coders, for a shot at 100 official prizes, and it sold that pitch on access to more than 60 million Engaged Pioneers.

One Hundred Hoodies for a Developer Sales Force

The drive opened around June 5, 2026, and ran until Pi2Day. Pioneers were told to find AI builder groups on Reddit, X, Facebook, and coding forums, join the thread, explain App Studio, and file one public post link inside the mining app.

The talking points were fixed. Builders would get built-in PI payments, identity checks, the Pi Ad Network, and a crowd the project still counts above 60 million Engaged Pioneers. One valid link was enough to enter the draw.

The Core Team never published the 100 names after the deadline. Winner notices in past Pi merch draws have moved through official channels only, because fake prize emails follow these campaigns, and that silence is the full public record of the hoodie round.

The Core Team kept pushing the same ask in the final days, pairing it with a test of the SLICE launchpad token, and framed both as work that feeds apps rather than a price event.

Pi Network merch raffle App Studio 110 apps
SoloHost apps after Pi2Day vibe coder campaign

App Studio Turns a Two-Minute Prompt Into a Pi App

The raffle sat on a May 13, 2026 studio update. Creators can build in Codex, Claude Code, Replit, Cursor, or Lovable, then paste App Studio prompts so the Pi SDK, login, and payments drop into an existing prototype.

The official walkthrough uses a Connect 4 game from Replit. Pi says that path can finish in as soon as 2 minutes, depending on the tool and the size of the code, and that the baked-in rules can shorten the wait for Mainnet approval.

Vibe coders and creators from all over can now tap into Pi Network’s massive user base of over 60 million Engaged Pioneers by easily bringing their AI-created apps to Pi’s real distribution network and utility ecosystem through Pi App Studio!

Pi Core Team, official blog, May 13, 2026

Mainnet payment access is not automatic. The studio still withholds live PI payments until an app shows real use, safe behavior, stable operation, and a genuine PI-priced job, which is the gate the raffle never advertised in the social posts.

The same May note carries the copy-and-paste prompts for Claude Code and the other named tools, and it states the strategy in plain terms: AI made building cheap, so the fight is now over users, and Pi wants to be the distribution layer.

Quantity is easy to quote and hard to trust. CoinStats has counted more than 46,000 App Studio projects against a little more than 300 apps on Mainnet, a gap that fits a factory of experiments with a thin live catalog.

Listings have also been opening on 404 pages after a publish, with the home route gone while ratings and staking still show, and some rebuilds that “fix” the page strip features on the next pass. That is the product the hoodie posts were selling.

110 SoloHost Apps and a 1.78 Million Quest

Pi2Day did not lead with the raffle. It led with three products aimed past the mining app: SoloHost on Pi Desktop, Pi Sign-in for outside sites, and PiVerify for clients that want Pi’s human checks and pay in PI.

A Quest then ran from June 28 to July 13, 2026, walking people through those tools, directory staking, and vibe-coded apps in the Fireside Forum. Finishers received a special in-app badge for Chats and social profiles.

THE PI2DAY QUEST IN NUMBERS

  • Quest starts: Over 2.56 million Pioneers opened the steps.
  • Full finishers: More than 1.78 million completed every step for the badge.
  • SoloHost catalog: Community developers had already deployed 110 apps by the recap.

The recap, posted August 5, 2026, is the first official scorecard after the merch deadline, and it is where the Core Team logged 110 apps through SoloHost for node machines and Pi Desktop users.

THREE PI2DAY PRODUCTS

Product What it does Who it is for
SoloHost Lets people run local AI and other apps on their own computers, with a phone view in Pi Browser Developers listing apps, plus over 420,000 node operators
Pi Sign-in Lets a Pioneer use a Pi account on supported third-party sites and apps Outside websites that want Pi login and a verified-human flag
PiVerify Sells Pi’s real-human checks to outside clients that need KYC-style controls Firms that pay in PI for those checks

SoloHost is the piece that matches the raffle’s AI pitch most closely, because it is where local agents and other desktop tools actually run. Pi Sign-in and PiVerify push identity outward, and only PiVerify is described as taking PI as the fee.

By late August the catalog had named extras, including OpenClaw, a local AI agent that can sit on a local model or on ChatGPT and Claude, and an Atlassian MCP Server app for Jira-style workflows run on the machine. SoloHost is still in beta, with an open publisher flow, and users are told to judge each package themselves.

Why PI Still Closes Below 10 Cents

The token did not treat Pi2Day as a demand event. CoinGecko has PI closed at $0.097365 on September 12, with a market value of $1,058,257,160 that day, more than 96 percent below the $2.99 high from February 2025.

In early June, when the raffle was still open, PI was changing hands near $0.12. The later print is not a crash from that level so much as the same grind, with unlocks still feeding the float.

CoinStats puts about 1.21 billion PI unlocking across 2026 as lockup terms mature. New coins do not need a headline to hit the tape; they need buyers, and a catalog of local desktop apps does not automatically create them.

PiVerify is the one new line that is supposed to take PI as payment. SoloHost apps run on the user’s computer, and the node-pay layer for extra compute is still being built, so a lot of the new “utility” can exist without anyone spending the token.

That is the hole the raffle never closed. Hoodie posts can recruit prototypes. They cannot force those prototypes to charge PI, and they cannot soak a year of unlocks.

Desktop 0.6.3 Ranks Apps by Who Is Running Them

On September 9, 2026, the Core Team shipped Pi Desktop 0.6.3 with a SoloHost pass that treats live use as the ranking signal. From this build, the team also dropped the old “Pi Node version” label and started calling the releases Pi Desktop versions.

WHAT DESKTOP 0.6.3 CHANGED

  • Running-count rank: Community apps now rise by how many people are running them, not by a static install tally.
  • My Apps: Publishers get a home-page list of their own SoloHost titles.
  • Readiness probe: The client checks whether an app is actually answering, to cut intermittent 502 errors.
  • Docker Compose: Technical users can start and stop containers from the install folder when they need to debug.
  • AI-readable contract: A new repo is laid out so AI agents can help package a SoloHost app.

The contract lives as the SoloHost developer contract on GitHub, the same file the September 9 note says is structured so an AI helper can build a valid package. That is App Studio’s prompt trick, moved onto the desktop runtime.

Two weeks earlier, on August 19, 2026, the Core Team said five volunteer node runners had finished an end-to-end distributed compute test through a SoloHost app, with each machine taking jobs from a Pi coordinator and sending results back. The pay-for-compute marketplace that would turn that test into PI demand is still ahead of the software.

Replies under that Desktop post still skip the ranking tools. They stay on stalled KYC files, wallet rights, and a coin that has not moved with the release notes, which is the same argument the raffle was supposed to retire by putting apps in front of users.

September 15 Brings the Protocol 27 Upgrade

On August 21, 2026, the Core Team said Testnet was moving to Protocol 27 after Protocol 26 on Mainnet, with a Mainnet target of September 15, 2026. The note describes more flexible and secure smart contract authentication, so accounts and apps can approve transactions in more ways.

A July 29 note called Protocol 26 and 27 the last two steps after 8 successful upgrades in the preceding months. The raffle, the Quest, and the Desktop builds are the app layer sitting on that protocol work.

If September 15 lands cleanly, App Studio prototypes and SoloHost packages get a sturdier contract layer. If it slips, the 110-app catalog stays a desktop beta with a token that CoinGecko last closed at $0.097365, and the unpaid Pioneer sales force will have another round of posts to write before anyone spends PI on the software they were told to recruit.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Pi Network’s app tools, community raffle, and token prints, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, trading advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold PI or any other digital asset, and it is not a prediction of future price. Readers should consult a qualified financial adviser who understands crypto market risk before making any investment decision. Figures, app counts, protocol dates, and campaign statuses reflect the official posts and market data cited here and can change as unlocks, upgrades, and studio listings move.

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Harry is the editor of Oton Technology, an independent site he owns and edits, covering the part of technology that people actually have to act on. After ten years in journalism, first reporting and then editing, he works from primary material by habit: the advisory rather than the write up of it, the filing rather than the press release, the changelog rather than the launch video. Every figure in an article carries its source and its date, and where a number comes from a vendor or an analyst model rather than a count, he says so plainly instead of letting it stand as established fact. What he leaves out is anything he could not verify himself, which on a beat full of unnamed supply chain claims removes a great deal. That standard applies across all the sections the site publishes for an international audience, from artificial intelligence and security to phones, computers, gaming, crypto and the software businesses depend on. He corrects errors in the open and labels them, because a site that hides its mistakes is asking readers to trust the rest on nothing.

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