Pi Network touts mining reward, performance upgrades in new node version 0.5.4

Pi Network’s update to its node infrastructure, version 0.5.4 of the Pi Desktop application, went live in the early morning hours of Tuesday. The upgrade is slated to improve performance and mining reward calculations, while also fixing several community-reported issues affecting node operations in recent months.

The Pi core team made the update announcement through a blog post published on Tuesday, which explained that the latest release is meant to solve several issues from its previous version, 0.5.3. Node operators had reported problems that interfered with mining reward calculations, automatic updates, and block container creation.

“Version 0.5.4 resolves issues reported by community Node operators, including problems affecting Node mining rewards, automatic updates, and block container creation,” the Pi Network official blog statement read.

Pi Network receives new port verification and reward calculation system

The 0.5.4 update adds a new open port verification mechanism to the blockchain network, where operators can track and authenticate open ports in Pioneer-operated nodes to improve both the security and accuracy of bonus reward calculations.

The enhanced tracking also marks progress toward Pi’s goal of expanding the utility of its node infrastructure beyond transaction validation, purportedly to support external computational tasks and decentralized applications.

Pi Network has also refined the user interface of its desktop software application, previously known as the Pi Node, which can now open approved external links directly from within the platform.

This new functionality lets users access blog posts, resource pages, and development updates without leaving the mining environment. The external redirects were disabled previously and caused hiccups for users attempting to follow links from the mining app or Pi App Studio.

The update also relocates the Pi App Studio to the top navigation bar in the Pi Desktop, placing it alongside the mining app and node functions and out from under the Utilities tab. 

Additionally, display issues affecting the App Studio preview feature have been fixed to refine their visibility and functionality for developers testing their projects.

Node utility expansion plan under OpenMind partnership

The latest node version update comes on the heels of Pi Network’s proof-of-concept collaboration with OpenMind, an artificial intelligence company developing an open-source operating system for robots to learn and work together.

Volunteer Pi Node operators for the project participated in running image recognition AI models for OpenMind. The initiative was meant to assess how well Pi’s distributed node network can perform real-world computational tasks for third parties and become a decentralized compute layer.

Pi Network and OpenMind’s proof-of-concept project, where OpenMind’s AI models can run on Pi Node infrastructure, explores the capability of Pi’s global network of nodes to support decentralized AI training and computing tasks.

By transforming unused computing power into… pic.twitter.com/8GN9UDNy8J

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) November 3, 2025

The successful test suggests that the Pi infrastructure could one day support AI training and computation workloads, allowing the network’s 350,000+ active nodes to contribute collective computing power for applications like decentralized AI and data processing.

Beyond price activity, Pi Network’s Testnet 1 has now processed millions of transactions with “near-zero failures,” as boasted by the Pi core team in late October. 

Pi coin surges to $0.30, market correction cuts down gains

Pi Network’s native token PI experienced a rally at the end of October, jumping nearly 50% within days from $0.20 to almost $0.30 before correcting down to $0.24 on November 2.

In the past 24 hours, PI rose 0.58% to $0.23, breaking above its 7-day simple moving average of $0.224 and clearing the Fibonacci 61.8% retracement at $0.228. 

However, the Chaikin Money Flow, or the flow of money into or out of a security by using price and volume data over the last week, is slightly negative at -0.0026. While short-term momentum has improved, liquidity inflows are at the lowest point since November began. 

Pi’s daily trading volume reached $34 million after a 60% 24-hour market activity, which could have possibly cooled its climb back to late October’s $0.3 charge.

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