Request : Where are all the Lightning Network Faucets?

[Kakmakr]

In the early days of Bitcoin, faucets was used to introduce people to Bitcoin <Before it became a money-making scene> and it quickly became one of the most successful tools to spread adoption.

I know my first introduction to Bitcoin was some free coins that I received from a faucet and I played around with those coins, until I figured out that it was actually "real" money and not some worthless token. <This was all done risk free, without investment of my own capital>

The Lightning Network is focussed on micro payments and faucets thrive on micro payments that are done within their centralized software. We want to highlight the effectiveness and speed of micro payments on the Lightning Network, so the first application should be a platform where micro payments are front and centre of their business model, right?

Let's discuss reasons why we are not seeing adoption of the Lightning Network being pushed by the platform that use micro payments the most --> Faucets!

Lightning Network Faucets will be the next evolution of old faucets. 

 

[1714194933]

1714194933

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

Faucets were the beginning or entry point for many of us into crypto space. While we didn't have much knowledge on what exactly does a bitcoin/cryptocurrency mean we have started using faucets! Faucets on the whole were simple money making strategy by solving captcha through which we received satoshis. They were accumulated and we finally withdrawn them to our wallets by paying a minimal fee. But LN doesn't work that way. For one to transact through off-chain, they need to open a channel on-chain between the faucet owner and receiver by paying in bitcoin. Meanwhile if the faucet owner agrees to use LN and requests the newbie user to open a channel by paying in btc, they might assume that as a scam and runaway without using the faucet.

<This was all done risk free, without investment of my own capital>

This is quite enough to prove that if LN were to be adopted, we would require to pay first to open a channel. LN requires your money to start a channel man, faucet owner doesn't pay for everything! Faucets are a way of introducing a newbie into crypto space and not making them run away without using those faucets and on top of that it might be a little complicated for new users to understand how LN functions.

[btc4peace]

A better adoption for faucets would be for us to create a service that allows website ownwers to pay a monthly fee to the faucet host and then the website owner places some provided code on their site that places a faucet on their site.

Then we create a directory of hosted faucet sites and people visit those sites to collect.

Value to the website owners to get visitors, funding for faucet provided by subscription fees instead of ads.

Could work...

[eternalgloom]

Even though I don't use faucets myself, I do agree that it's good for introducing new people to Bitcoin.
What's really needed is a faucet that doesn't rely on misleading advertising and possibly harmful pop-ups etc.

But yeah, who would build something like that, if there's no profit to be made with it?
Maybe a big corporation that's invested in Bitcoin and does this as some sort of promotion?

Here's code for a lightning network faucet at least (for testnet): https://github.com/lightninglabs/lightning-faucet

Disclaimer: I have not looked at the code, use at your own discretion.

[Kakmakr]

But yeah, who would build something like that, if there's no profit to be made with it?
Maybe a big corporation that's invested in Bitcoin and does this as some sort of promotion?

You actually answered your own question. 

In the beginning of Bitcoin, people like Gavin gave away his bitcoin for free to increase Bitcoin adoption. Yes, some people might argue that it might have been a bad move, because those bitcoins are worth a lot more now, but the question is, would it have been this valuable if he and many others like him, did not do that?

Supporters of the Lightning Network must donate money to kickstart a LN Faucet and they can offer advertisement space on the website to help fund the faucet. 

The reward for them would be global adoption of the Lightning Network and a possible increase in the price. <This will increase the value of their remaining coins and would make up for their losses in the donations.> 

[hatshepsut93]

Have you tried googling? I've found these:

Mainnet

https://www.coinpanic.com/Lightning/CommunityJar

Testnet

https://faucet.lightning.community/

https://htlc.me/ (not a faucet, but an online wallet with pre-allocated tBTC balance)

The Lightning Network is focussed on micro payments and faucets thrive on micro payments that are done within their centralized software. We want to highlight the effectiveness and speed of micro payments on the Lightning Network, so the first application should be a platform where micro payments are front and centre of their business model, right?

Let's discuss reasons why we are not seeing adoption of the Lightning Network being pushed by the platform that use micro payments the most --> Faucets!

Faucets are bad, because it's just paying tiny amounts of money people for watching ads, and guess who is engaging in this activity? Those who can't afford to buy anything, because they are broke and have to waste their time on faucets in the first place.

[Lucius]

Let's discuss reasons why we are not seeing adoption of the Lightning Network being pushed by the platform that use micro payments the most --> Faucets!
Lightning Network Faucets will be the next evolution of old faucets. 
 

I do not see any advantage that faucets start using LN at this point, and reason is very simple. Faucet users have fully functional and free microwallet which allow them to claim form faucets and get instant free payment to microwallet account. Your idea would be that every faucet owner pay directly to users by using LN, which is currently for most users unrealistic and technically unfeasible option.

Much has changed from time when faucets pay 5 BTC per claim, but most people consider them waste of time before and today.

[LTU_btc]

It's interesting topic for discussion. I think faucets changed a lot since the early days of Bitcoin. In past faucets were used to spread word about Bitcoin and help to make it more popular. Now faucets aren't working as charity organizations. Now faucet ownersvare aiming to reach profit from advertising networks. Spreading a word about Bitcoin, adopting new innovative things aren't their mission anymore. And transaction fees are low in recent months, so faucet owners now don't see any reason to find new ways how to pay to their user.
And as Lucius said, now majority of faucets now are paying through microwallets like Faucethub. All payments from faucets to users are made off-chain, so faucet owners aren't concerned about things like transaction fees at all. Now there are just few faucets which makes direct payments to Bitcoin addresses. Faucet payments through Lightning Network sounds like utophia right now. To make such payments custom made faucet script would be needed, and faucet owners would need to have good technical knowledge to enable such payments. It doesn't looks feasible now and in near future.

[pooya87]

using Lightning Network and setting up a node for it _at this point_ is a complicated thing. add to that the large amount of FUD and misinformation out there and anybody would think twice before getting near LN. specially a faucet creator who is in 99% of cases someone who has little to no knowledge about bitcoin. in other words usually those who start a faucet are doing it to make money from ads they fill in their web page, and i think the fact that most of them used to use Google Ads (before it banned them all) should tell you what they were interested in (fiat not bitcoin). these people don't know what a node is let alone a LN node.

someone needs to first create something "super easy" for them to use which they have to only copy and paste then you will see them grow like mushrooms. as they grew in early days when things like MicroWallet were introduced which linked them all together and did the payments for them.

[Kakmakr]

People are totally missing the point about Faucets. The latest version of faucets are profit driven operations and they are not really geared towards increasing adoption. The old faucets was geared to adoption, because the coins were donated for that purpose.

One of the challenges I see is the complexity of the Lightning Network at the moment and also the cost to maintain these LN faucets for a long time, when the userbase increase.

It will still be a good experiment to see if the LN adoption will grow, when people are first introduced to it with LN faucets. I believe people will start using it, when there are some motivation to do it. <Apart from the tx speed> 

[Lucius]

People are totally missing the point about Faucets. The latest version of faucets are profit driven operations and they are not really geared towards increasing adoption. The old faucets was geared to adoption, because the coins were donated for that purpose.

You want to faucets be again what they were in the past, to promote cryptocurrency with donated coins, but you forget how much price of BTC changed from that time. Who will donate coins today just to promote them and LN, there is no such people today.

LN will grow with time, we are still in the testing phase, and as pooya87 say it is too complicated at this time to create such projects.

[Kakmakr]

People are totally missing the point about Faucets. The latest version of faucets are profit driven operations and they are not really geared towards increasing adoption. The old faucets was geared to adoption, because the coins were donated for that purpose.

You want to faucets be again what they were in the past, to promote cryptocurrency with donated coins, but you forget how much price of BTC changed from that time. Who will donate coins today just to promote them and LN, there is no such people today.

LN will grow with time, we are still in the testing phase, and as pooya87 say it is too complicated at this time to create such projects.

No, I am not saying that people should only donate millions of dollars for this, the alternative can be funded by advertisements on the website. The price of a bitcoin does not matter, because you will not be giving out whole bitcoins, like back in the day. 

The Lightning Network is the game-changer and people should group efforts together to make a success of this project. Once the Lightning Network goes mainstream, more applications will be developed for it and that would stimulate demand for coins, which will increase the price. <A win-win for every Bitcoin owner> 

[pooya87]

what you say about introducing people to LN by having an LN faucet makes sense but there is a difference between giving away bitcoin today and back in the days when the faucets gave 5 bitcoins at a time. and that difference is in the way you obtain bitcoin yourself. today you have to buy it but back then you could simply use your CPU power to find a block with 50BTC reward and then give away some of it to others to introduce them to bitcoin.

on top of that you also have to consider abusers that exist today compared to back in the days! back then that 5BTC/IP/Day wasn't really abused that much. the IP restriction was more than enough to keep it running for a long time. it even received donations from others! today however if you set up a faucet it will be attacked by hundreds of bots and would go dry in an instant if you don't place some sort of "ultra bot fighter". and the result is that you aren't really giving away bitcoins to new people who want to learn about LN, you would be giving away bitcoin to those who already know it and also know how to suck a faucet dry.

[eternalgloom]

Faucets are bad, because it's just paying tiny amounts of money people for watching ads, and guess who is engaging in this activity? Those who can't afford to buy anything, because they are broke and have to waste their time on faucets in the first place.

Faucets are not inherently bad, just the current implementation of most faucets are not all too kosher.
I could see great use-cases of a community-funded faucet for example.

In essence, they're a great way to teach people about Bitcoin, without them having to spend money on it.
People generally want to learn how something works without having to spend money on it, especially with something like Bitcoin.

You actually answered your own question. 

In the beginning of Bitcoin, people like Gavin gave away his bitcoin for free to increase Bitcoin adoption. Yes, some people might argue that it might have been a bad move, because those bitcoins are worth a lot more now, but the question is, would it have been this valuable if he and many others like him, did not do that?

Supporters of the Lightning Network must donate money to kickstart a LN Faucet and they can offer advertisement space on the website to help fund the faucet. 

The reward for them would be global adoption of the Lightning Network and a possible increase in the price. <This will increase the value of their remaining coins and would make up for their losses in the donations.> 

Indeed, I did answer my own question

I'd definitely support a crowdfunding effort like that.
Just like you, I also started out using faucets, after that I purchased some Bitcoins through Kraken.

I definitely see the merit in having a LN faucet that is not driven by advertising.

[hatshepsut93]

Faucets are bad, because it's just paying tiny amounts of money people for watching ads, and guess who is engaging in this activity? Those who can't afford to buy anything, because they are broke and have to waste their time on faucets in the first place.

In essence, they're a great way to teach people about Bitcoin, without them having to spend money on it.
People generally want to learn how something works without having to spend money on it, especially with something like Bitcoin.

 

And testnet faucets are perfect for this task. Meanwhile, you'd have to click for hours and hours till you be able to amass enough coins to withdraw to your wallet on mainnet.

I'm just feeling that faucets are a waste of time not only for users, but for the owners and advertisers too.

[buwaytress]

I'm with OP on this. I actually used a faucet a lot earlier than in 2016 when I finally decided to properly "get into" Bitcoin by getting my own proper wallet and client, and it had absolutely nothing to do with collecting free money. I'm 100% sure you'll still find a healthy number of users who'd use a faucet for purely educational purposes.

99bitcoins used to run a "faucet", I know because in 2016 when I wanted to see what a tx looked like in my wallet, I used it and got 0.0001 BTC. It was a different sort of faucet because it wasn't just a captcha-solving puzzle, you got to it after reading an educational article and then you had to send an email asking for it (absolutely no spam since then, too!).

Was a tiny amount, perhaps, but enough to even let me make a spend.

I definitely think faucets are a good way to help educate and spread awareness but yeah, as eternal says, implementation is currently really bad - but that's because most of these commercial sites with faucets market their faucets specifically to people who want to watch ads or click on ads to get fractions of a cent.

Implement to educate, something like how 99bitcoins did it. Faucets for kids are an awesome idea too, imo.

[eternalgloom]

Implement to educate, something like how 99bitcoins did it. Faucets for kids are an awesome idea too, imo.

I remember that 99bitcoins faucet, it was pretty great while it lasted and I remember sending some friends over there who wanted to learn more about Bitcoin.
Nowadays, I just send them to Moonbitcoin, they can usually earn a withdraw-able amount within a week. Lots of ads though...

[LoyceV]

I've been playing around with a Lightning wallet lately, and discovered this Lighting faucet: https://light.yuyaogawa.com/faucet/ that's still working.

It will still be a good experiment to see if the LN adoption will grow, when people are first introduced to it with LN faucets. I believe people will start using it, when there are some motivation to do it. <Apart from the tx speed>  

I'm considering creating a topic: "LoyceV's Legendary Lightning Network Satoshi Doubler Trippler", in which anyone who sends me 1 Satoshi through LN, gets back 3 Satoshis. It'll be a lot of work without a bot though.

I'm quite impressed with how smooth LN operates already, and would like to see the network grow further.

And as Lucius said, now majority of faucets now are paying through microwallets like Faucethub.

LN offers the opportunity to get rid of the middle man, which is what Bitcoin is all about. I don't care about getting a very small amount in Bitcoin from a faucet, if I have to make hundreds of claims before I can withdraw. But I'd jump through several hoops just to get 5 Sat out of a LN faucet to test it.

[akamit]

I'm considering creating a topic: "LoyceV's Legendary Lightning Network Satoshi Doubler Trippler", in which anyone who sends me 1 Satoshi through LN, gets back 3 Satoshis. It'll be a lot of work without a bot though.

Is it confirmed yet?
So if I understood correctly then if I send you BTC0.01 through LN then you will send back BTC0.03 and it could be any amount? Sounds Ponzi 

I'd like to learn more about this. I haven't followed LN thing so I don't have any knowledge.

[LoyceV]

Is it confirmed yet?

I won't make it, I went for LoyceV's Legendary Little Lightning Loans instead.

So if I understood correctly then if I send you BTC0.01 through LN then you will send back BTC0.03 and it could be any amount? Sounds Ponzi  

I said one satoshi, not a million I can tripple 1 satoshi all day long, a million is going to be expensive.

I'd like to learn more about this. I haven't followed LN thing so I don't have any knowledge.

I had been reading about it for a very long time, installing a client was long overdue.