Pi Network’s PI Finally Stages Big Recovery After New Deadline Announcement

Here’s what needs to happen to the Pi Network protocol in the next ten days.

After consecutive weeks of consistently trading downward, Pi Network’s native token has finally staged a more impressive recovery over the past 24 hours or so, surging to and just over $0.18.

This came as the overall market’s health has remained relatively stable lately, but also following a new protocol update deadline set by the team.

PI’s Rebound

It was just over a month ago when PI skyrocketed to almost $0.30 from a starting point of $0.18. Aside from several of the updates that we will touch upon later in this article, the other major reason behind that impressive surge was the listing announcement from Kraken.

However, once the asset indeed went live for trading, it nosedived immediately in what turned out to be a classic ‘sell-the-news’ event. It quickly returned to its starting point and fell even lower in April. Even after the entire crypto market started to rebound after the US/Iran ceasefire announcement last week, PI lagged for the most part and dipped to a multi-month low of under $0.165 a few days ago.

However, the bulls finally intervened at this point and helped halt the free-falls. Moreover, PI has emerged as one of the top gainers in the past day, surging by over 5% (and 8% weekly) to just over $0.18, which is a three-week peak. PI has re-entered the top 50 alts by market cap as its own is up to $1.830 billion.

The New Deadline

The aforementioned new protocol update deadline set by the team was announced hours ago, which reads that the Pi Mainnet will be upgraded to version 22 by April 27. As in all previous updates, all Mainnet nodes were instructed to ensure they had completed this step to remain connected to the network.

The Pi Mainnet is upgrading to Protocol 22 – Deadline: Apr 27.

All Mainnet nodes are required to complete this step before the deadline to remain connected to the network.

Details here: https://t.co/9VehO7hhj1

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) April 17, 2026

You may also like:

Recall that these major protocol updates began in late February, with the introduction of version 19.6. The subsequent one, v19.9, was deployed in early March, while the crucial v20.2 was announced on Pi Day (March 14). It laid out the foundations of enabling smart contract capabilities. Version 21 was successfully completed in early April.