Crypto glossary
Crypto faucet (testnet faucet)
A crypto faucet is a website or app that hands out tiny amounts of crypto, or free testnet tokens for developers, often in exchange for a simple task.
The first Bitcoin faucet, set up by developer Gavin Andresen in 2010, gave away 5 BTC to each visitor to help the network grow. Later faucets paid fractions of a cent in satoshis for solving captchas or watching ads, earning their revenue from advertising. Today the most useful faucets are for testnets, where developers request free test ETH or other tokens to deploy and try contracts without spending real money.
Testnet faucets are a basic part of developer tooling and are offered by node providers, wallet companies and the networks themselves. To stop bots from draining them, many now require a small mainnet balance, a social login or a proof-of-work puzzle in the browser.
Retail faucets rarely pay anything meaningful, and the amounts often stay below withdrawal minimums or dust limits. Fake faucets and faucet-style apps are also used to spread malware, collect personal data or trick users into connecting a wallet and signing a malicious approval. Testnet tokens have no value, and offers to sell them are usually scams.
Example
A developer testing a new contract requests 0.1 Sepolia ETH from a testnet faucet, deploys the contract, and repeats the process without paying any real fees.