Faucet
A faucet is an effortless way for users to earn cryptocurrency that doesn’t require any technical skills or purchasing of digital assets. It incentivises users to use a particular cryptocurrency, where users perform various tasks like completing a captcha or viewing an ad, and, in turn, they receive a small amount of cryptocurrency for their effort.
One of the earliest and most common forms of faucets is the Bitcoin faucet, which was created by Gavin Andresne in 2010; it rewards individuals with satoshis. Bitcoin Aliens, launched in 2014, is a faucet that users utilise to earn cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash as a reward for playing games from their phones.
A faucet also acts as a method to onboard more users. For instance, altcoins interested in gaining more network users can add a faucet that awards small bits of cryptocurrency to users who complete their first transaction on a network. Since most networks require ‘gas’ to complete any transaction (like Ethereum), faucets give users a small amount of cryptocurrency to help complete a transaction on the network.
Faucets in the present time have now become few and far between, with most deployed for new networks to onboard more users.
Key Takeaway
A faucet is a tool in the cryptocurrency space that can either be used as a reward system to compensate cryptocurrency users for completing specific tasks or to help onboard new users to an ecosystem.