There's something very unpleasant about using a bathroom in an airport or institution. I understand the issue: the thinner the toilet paper, the cheaper it is, the quicker it is to break down, and high traffic areas can be an issue when it comes to cost and plugged porcelain. But it is so thin, prone to tearing, less absorbent, yuck. There's nothing like the thicker, softer, and more absorbent experience of a 3 ply. But what about a Cointiply? Whether it was 2 or 3 ply before, I might say it is 1 ply now.

In this post, I share some concerns about my favorite crypto faucet site. It is not to tear it down, but hopefully to provide visibility to issues to strengthen it. Regretfully, the moderators of the chat inform us that support says there is only a small backlog of support tickets, but others report that may be because support is just closing tickets with no effort to fix the problems.

Finding Cointiply

A few years ago, Robinhood was a playground for stocks and crypto and where WallStreetBets redditors could play out. Even non-crypto enthusiasts were enjoying tracking DOGE as it varied from .03 USD to .08 USD and back and throwing a few bucks at it. I protested in my mind paying (or justifying to my SO) for any DOGE, but thought being able to say I had a few would be fun, and went looking for a crypto faucet where I could get a few.

I am not new to faucets; I received my first BTC many years back, responding to CAPCHAs and experiencing crypto addresses and non-custodial wallets for the first time. I was willing to waste a little time while watching tv to get some DOGE.

I found a handful of faucets that offered DOGE specifically. There were quite a few for Bitcoin, or Bitcoin Cash, but Cointiply fell on the sort list of DOGE providers (and, at the time Bitcoin, and later Litecoin and Dash). And Cointiply seemed to offer higher awards that the others; I was able to get a few dollars of DOGE very quickly, compared to other sites where earnings were much ... MUCH ... slower, and I abandoned them.

Trusting Cointiply

Faucets are a low reward, unknown risk offering. Bad guys can take advantage of people through exploits in the banner ads, in the pay-to-click web sites, through the surveys, and then there is the site administration itself. The moderators in the chat at the time - mods on Cointiply are unpaid volunteers who, with the chat regulars, try to help newcomers and maintain some sense of order - had long history with Cointiply, and were quite clear - Cointiply had gone through a very difficult time with a "Mining" game, which was a big money loser. One mod, "Mr. B", experienced such a problem that he started his own faucet site. However, he is around as a mod on Cointiply, however active, to this day, letting people know that the owners of Cointiply made good, to their own damage. In some other circumstances, when the survey companies grabbed back money from people who may have taken the same survey on more than one platform or otherwise bothered the survey company, Cointiply ate the claw back, again giving confidence to its users.

Challenging Cointiply

Cointiply began to expand with the release of an Android application. This brought an influx of new users from around the world, many of whom were not native English speakers. That meant that the English rules and instructions were difficult for the new users to read.

Cointiply also changed the way certain earning opportunity worked, in particular the "chat rain pool". Previously, "valuable contributions" to the chat were necessary to share in this useful extra pot of funds contributed in large part by Cointiply to supplement earnings. The change meant you only needed to click a button periodically. However, many of the legacy users were unaware of the change, and Youtube videos offering poor advice began to proliferate. 

"Chat Rain"

Taking part

The Chat Rain instruction document (https://cointiply.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/36000197313-how-cointiply-chat-rain-works), which now clearly states in one place that typing in chat does not contribute to your portion of the rain pool ("Chatting is welcome, but messages do not increase your share.") as of May 2024, continued to state that the Rain Pool would "reward quality input to our chat room and activity on the site." (https://web.archive.org/web/20230401100303/https://cointiply.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/36000197313-how-cointiply-chat-rain-works), leading to both garbage posts and good but misguided contributions until that update, more than two years after the change.

With the big change, chat was not required for the "rain", but the button to be eligible for the rain was above the chat area. This now unnecessary link between the two caused and continues to cause a lot of confusion, as hundreds of new people daily, often misled by bad Youtube videos, come in groups to type "Hi" and "Hello" in chat thinking they earn for it.

Contributing to

The site provided a means to contribute coins from a user's holdings to the Rain Pool. Doing so did not change anyone's portion of an upcoming rain pool, but people were permitted. Some users would try to convince others to share their coins to their detriment; others did it for good will. The Youtube videos from bad and misguided people continued to encourage it.

Then Cointiply added "Quests", a pleasant additional earning opportunity to introduce people to how Cointiply worked with rewards. Two of those quests involved the Rain Pool; one to qualify (just hit the button) and earn (which people didn't understand, as noted above), and one to contribute to the Rain Pool. However, some people found a way to abuse the Rain Pool, and the ability to add to the pool has been disabled. However, the Quest (https://cointiply.com/home?intent=quests) still remains, and no guidance other than the site response system saying such contributions are disabled is provided, so new people all the time come to the chat, which has no Cointiply support people monitoring it to respond, and experiencing frustration from being blocked in their Quest progress.

"Daily Faucet" Roll

More confusing than a real problem, Cointiply offers a place where you can click to take part, respond to a Capcha, and roll a number between 1 and 99999. Each roll will probably earn less than a penny, but may be $10 - $70 with a roll of 99999. However, there is inconsistent terminology for this process, especially between the web site and the app, including:

• Roll the Faucet
• Your Cointiply Faucet
• Daily Free Coins
• Daily Free Spin

and to make things more confusing, some people can do this task twice a day, while others can do it hourly - nothing is "daily".

Loyalty and Interest

Two ways Cointiply rewards its longer term users are a loyalty bonus and interest.

The loyalty bonus increases the rewards from the faucet roll, above. If you earn 100 days in a row or more, you double your roll. It increases 1% a day up to 100. However, the system that tracks user attendance and participation has been broken for many months. Users find that their loyalty bonus does not reflect their activity on the site.

Likewise, the site offers "interest" at 5% annually (so approximately .1% weekly) if the feature is enabled and the user holds a minimum of 35,000 coins ($3.50) on account. That likewise is broken for many, and people have not received their interest for months; at least one of the active moderators has stated this impacts them, as well as many other posters.

Premium

The site offers a pay-for-premium status plan. It notes the benefits as: (https://cointiply.com/home?intent=premium)

• No popup advertisements.
• No hover / slide in advertisements.
• Boost your maximum CointiPlay wager to 200,00 Coins.
• Skip up to 2 days without having your loyalty bonus reset.
• Early access to new features.
• Premium support.
• Premium badge and access to premium only chat room.
• Many more premium perks coming soon!

With the broken loyalty system, there has been little evidence that any of these benefits (other than the ability to double your gambling earnings ("the Multiplier", here called "CointiPlay") and a Premium chat room filled with crickets and no Cointiply staff support are being received by those who pay.

Promo Codes

The site offers a quantity limited code, every now and then, that people can type into the Promo Code area, usually for around a penny. When one is made public, the chat goes nuts, as people don't understand how to scroll up. Although the Promo Code page encourages people to go to "Twitter" (it was renamed as X almost two years ago), it does not list Cointiply's other social media sites, nor does the Quest instruction guide (https://cointiply.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/36000339654-types-of-quests-how-to-complete-cointiply-quests). Previously, they may have been made available on Facebook, TikTok, or other sites. But prior references to the site blog are gone, there are few updates on X ... and I haven't received an email for ages.

Other areas

There are a broad number of other issues, which I don't think are unique to Cointiply:

• Complaints about how fair the gambling game, the Multiplier is
• People playing games with the PTC ads and changing the target after review, with bad sites trying to put trojan horses on users computers, pornography sites, and exploiting the site's timer so users do not receive their fractions of a penny to view
• Challenges keeping the (here is a compliment) massive amount of on-site documentation up to date.
• Lack of involvement by paid staff: a check as I write this says the primary customer support person who sometimes visits has not been on the site for more than two weeks; one of the two site Administrators has not been on site for more than a year. Many of the volunteer chat moderators have not been on site for months, if not years.
• Some of the third parties require an additional process to take earnings on those sites and transfer/convert them to Cointiply coins.
• VPNs are a scourge, and many people trying to keep their loyalty up may inadvertently wind up on a public or friend's WIFI with VPN.

My take 

I hope the Admins at Cointiply take these notes as they are meant. Cointiply is still a quality site for those wishing to get their start in cryptocurrencies, and offers many options. I find for anyone willing to read and explore, I have seen no other sites with a help system as useful (https://cointiply.freshdesk.com/support/home). I would rather have 1 ply available to me than no ply.