Security Circles are groups of trusted people built by each Pioneer. You can add as many trusted Pioneers as you can to your Security Circle. Your Security Circle mining reward increases for each new Pioneer added to your Security Circle, but caps at 5 members. This means that each member of your Security Circle gives you a 20% bonus (up to a 100% maximum) on your base mining rate as long as they remain active. The Security Circles are so central to the security of the Pi blockchain (as explained below) that the Security Circle reward raises the individual Pioneer mining rate by itself as well as by boosting any Referral Team, nodes, or app usage reward that applies to the Pioneer.
Pi Network Contributors are Pioneers who contribute to the network’s security by adding other trusted Pioneers to their Security Circles. In aggregate, these Security Circles help build a global trust graph that is used by the Pi consensus algorithm to secure the Pi blockchain. In other words, when Pioneers point to other Pioneers they trust, then it helps create a trusted social network that the Pi Nodes running the Pi blockchain can rely on to secure the blockchain. For this reason, it is important that you only add Pioneers to the security circle whom you personally trust.
Pi’s Contributor role becomes unlocked after you’ve finished 3 mining sessions as a Pioneer. After 3 days of mining, you will see a new icon of the security circle on the home screen of the app which you can click to start.
There are four roles for Pioneers in the Pi ecosystem: Pioneer, Contributor, Ambassador, and Node. To view your roles, first tap the ≡ icon in the top left of the mining app. Then, tap “Roles.”