$PI got tens of millions of people mining on phones without forcing anyone to buy hardware or put money down first. That no-friction onboarding was the whole pitch—get bodies in the door.

But that was always the easy part. Getting people in is one thing. Keeping them is another.

The real test starts now: venture money is flowing into apps built on top of $PI. Whether those apps deliver actual utility, entertainment, or reasons to stick around will decide if this turns into a real ecosystem or just another graveyard of downloaded-but-forgotten tokens.

Onboarding solved distribution. Apps solve retention. And retention is where most crypto projects die.