Almost 1 year ago, the cryptofaucets community has been shocked from the termination of operation of coinpot microwallet and the Moon Family Faucets and in my article with title "My thoughts why CoinPot is shutting down" I expressed my personal explanation why this shutdown took place taking into consideration the information that the CoinPot Team provided into their blog page. Most recently, I was informed mainly from the article with title "Breaking Crypto News: The end of ExpressCrypto" that another micropayments processor aka micro cryptowallet has been also shutcown, not due to maintenance and operation workload as it happened with CoinPot but due to a hardware failure that resulted in the loss of website's databases both active and backup, that took place on the 2021 Christmas Eve.
On this article, I would try to provide my thoughts about the ExpressCrypto shutdown and more importantly, I will try to provide some alternative microwallets that can be used as a replacement of their service.
The ExpressCrypto Shutdown
Precisely, the official and last announcement of Express Crypto has been the following.
Dear Members,
As everyone knows, ExpressCrypto has been offline since 2021-12-24 09:41:17.
Our database server currently cannot recognize the primary and backup disk. The entire ExpressCrypto technical team working on the system recovery.Updates:
- 2021-12-28: Transfer hard disks to special recovery company.
- 2021-12-29: Special recovery company working on the restoration of both disks.
- 2022-01-04: Due to the holidays, there is no update from the company.
- 2022-01-19: We have received the final response from the recovery company.
"It is with regret we inform you that after the diagnostics performed by our engineers we have found the damage to be too severe, deeming this case unrecoverable.
- SSD doesn't detect because of a failed controller chip
- Controller model: SM2258H
- There is no support for this controller model in the data recovery industry"
Due to this situation we will process to the liquidation of balances, fill out the form with the required informations.
Last date for filling the form is: 30-01-2022—The ExpressCrypto Team
From their announcement it was made clear that website's hard disks that store their database, although they were hard disks of Solid State Disk (SSD) Technology without any mechanical parts have failed and they were submitted to a special recovery company in order to restore their data without success. As my background comes from IT, few questions have been arised from their announcement which made me suspect that the announcement is fake and too convenient and the true reason behind the shutdown is hidden.
1. How is is possible for a SSD hard disk to fail and what are the signs of an imminnent SSD failure?
For those you aren't related to IT and computer science, SSDs (Solid State Disk) have no mechanical parts like the magnetic hard disks and they consist of a series of microchips that are able to store information on their "solid state".Therefore, it is very unlikely that a SSD could have their mechanical parts fail simply because they don't have any. Still, it is possible under severe usage that these microchips could fail but a quick reseach on the web using my PRESEARCH SEARCH ENGINE provided me various information about several symptoms of an imminnent SSD failure that can be detected BEFORE the failure providing precious time to migrate any data before the complete failure of the SSD, which can be summarized to the following accouding to https://www.salvagedata.com:
- Your machine won’t boot; you get the No boot device error message (on Windows), or a flashing question mark (on Mac devices)
- It runs excessively slow
- Active applications often freeze or crash
- Frequent Blue/Black Screen of Death errors
- Your drive becomes read-only
Therefore, it is apparent that if the faulure of SSD drives were the real reason behind the shutdown of the website, the ExpressCrypto Team took no action when these symptoms arose on their locally-operated server and for some reason they have been ignored resulting to the complete failure of their SSD drives and the shutdown of their operations.
2. How is it possible NOT to store the database on the cloud making use of internet web services and hosting and instead to use a local infrastructure?
Image Source: The Advantages of Cloud Computing Services
For those who have been working in web-hosting, they are aware that 25 years ago, the easiest way to run a website was to setup a locally-operated server in a computer that it was operating 24/7 burning electricity to keep the website alive on the web. Pretty much at the same way crypto-mining operates today with the only difference that due to the mining difficulty several computational units of CPUs or GPUs are needed for an efficient mining operation. Still big international companies such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Services have decided to shift this energy and infrastructure consuming practise and build their own web-hosting infrastrucure allowing big and small websites and even hobbyist blogs to be hosted in what today it is called "on the cloud" that requires ZERO hardware infrastructure and ZERO energy consumption from the individuals for the hosting of their websites. In fact these companies took over the complete hosting on their professional infrastructure covering the 100% of any potential hardware failures and charging their customers for the hosting of their websites in proportion to the web usage from their users. Therefore it is very difficult to understand why ExpressCrypto has decided to operate a 20th century web-hosting scheme and operate their website on their own server instead of opting for the most efficient and robust solution of making use these Cloud Services and their website on their infrastructure for a lower cost.
Therefore I believe that the true reason behind the shutdown of ExpressCrypto is hidden and that the ExpressCrypto Team has decided to provide to its customers a convenient but imperfect reasoning.
As a compensation, ExpressCrypto Team is requesting from the users of the platform have been requested to make a "rough" estimation of their funds stored on ExpressCrypto in USD and complete the corresponding form by providing their username and their ExpressCrypto ID in order to get a refund. Personally, this is a joke as anyone can provide any kind of false information and if the SSD drives of the falled have been completely failed, there is no way to confirm the request from the users. Anyone can request any kind of amount that had been stored on their platform. Even worse, since they request for their users to provide their username and their ExpressCrypto ID, that means that the database that stores this information is still alive but surprisingly, the database that keeps their funds and their cryptoaddresses NOT !
And Now What? Are there any other alternative microwallets available where cryopto-fauceteers can uswe them to store their funds there? As the poem of a contemporary Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis narrates:
And now what are going to do without the barbarians? These people were a kind of solution.
Και τώρα τι θα κάνουμε χωρίς τους βαρβάρους; Οι άνθρωποι αυτοί ήσαν μια κάποια λύσις
I am pretty certain that the gap that CoinPot or even ExpressCrypto left after their closure, can be easily filled from the existing microwallets that exist on the market. The main strategic advantage of these custodial MicroWallets in comparison with Centralised Crypto Exchanges such as Binance or CoinBase and mainsteam cryptowallets such as Celsius, CEX.io, Nexo.io, Holdnaut etc is that they do NOT require any KYC for opening and operating an account with them and therefore someone might say that they operate "outside the system" synched with Satoshi Nakamoto's Vision.
FaucetPay MicroWallet - It does what it says it does
FaucetPay is a micropayment wallet and earnings platform of cryptocurrency enabling the instant deposit of cryptocurrency micro-payments from many faucets and GPT/PTC platforms collaborate with FaucetPat at the same way Moon Faucets have been collaborating directly and exclusively with CoinPit. Even more significantly, FaucetPay can be used for the withdrawal of very small amount of cryptofunds as Mainstream wallets or crypto-exchanges that would eventually "evaporate" these microamounts through the network transactional fees. Exactly how FaucetPay is able to do that is unknown but I suspect they use their own "Lighting Layer 2 Network" in order to avoid these fees. Possible the collaborated Faucets only send a payment request to FaucetPay and not the real crypto and the FaucetPay serves that request from the Faucet's deposit. So the payment is actually done from FaucetPay not the Faucet.
Nevertheless, when the user tries to withdrawal any accumulative amounts to a mainstream on-chain wallet or crypto-exchange, the relevant transaction fee has to be paid in full but as the user accumulates a rather more significant amount, there is no danger of "funds evaporation". More importanly, FaucetPay DOES NOT require any kind of KYC-verification of their users and a simple email address is needed to open an account there. Therefore, personal identification documents of their users are NOT in danger of being hacked or sold to 3rd parties.
The platform supports various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, DASH, DigiByte, Tron, TRC-20 USDT, ZCASH, Solana, BEP20 BNB and the native token FEYORRA with more cryptocurrencies coming soon.
The platform includes the following sections:
- Coin swap section allowing the user to exchange any amount of cryptocurrency to any other supported cryptocurrency.
- Immense list of 600+ faucets to claim cryptocurrency with a list for each supported cryptocurrency.
- Earning section that includes a PTC program and third party Offerwalls, Surveys and Tasks.
- Generous rewarding Affiliate and Loyalty Program.
- Multiply gambling games such as Roll the Dice, Roulette, Limbo etc. For the gamblers, Faucet Pay operates also its own [email protected] called Pasino that includes a Faucet wheel and has many similarities with B3tFury and BC.Game again without the need of a KYC-verification.
- Availability of FREE scripts in the form of APIs allowing users to develop their own faucet platform and embed Faucet Pay payments in it.
No interest is included for keeping the earnings in the platform apart from the staking of the native token FEYORRA with an astonishing 356% APY. The following table includes a detailed list of the withdrawal fees to any other cryptocurrency wallet.
FaucetPay also provides a PaidToClick (PTC) section where users can earn Bitcoin Satoshi for viewing web ads but the platform advise its PTC users to exercise rigorous research before registering - investing on these websites as the majority of them can be considered as ponzi schemes and scams.
My personal advice is that users should withdraw their amounts as soon as they manage to accumulate a respectful amount that can cover the existing transaction fees since bad luck might ALWAYS take place. After all, Faucet Pay does not offer any staking opportunites apart from their native token so why should someone just keep their cryptocurrency funds "sleeping" when they can be staked on Binance Flexible Account? As an example, on 14th March 2021, the platform announced a major security incident and Faucet Pay suffered a loss of around $600,000 on that period after their hot-wallets were compromised and the hacker had access to their funds kept there. More relevant information can be found on the LeoFinance article with title "FaucetPay announces major security incident".
Stakecube PoS MicroWallet
Stakecube is a Micro-Wallet, Crypto-exchange platform and PoS (Proof of Stake (PoS) Pool provider. Not sure exactly exactly how the PoS Pool operates but StakeCube also host several daily faucets supported from the StakeCube community of unknown altcoins that currently have no significant value but they can be exchanged for BTC, the native token SCC (StakeCube Coin) the mainstream altcoins such as DASH, LTC, DOGE and stablecoins USDC, USDT.
Neverthleess, StakeCube can used an alternative microwallet where users can withdraw their faucets earnings and store them without the need of any kind of KYC verification and no official personal documents are required for the verification of the users and no hacking activity has been so far announced there. PVMihaladze has published a series of articles about StakeCube but personally i could hardly understand them.
MyCointainer – Evolution of "Staking as a Service"
MyCointainer is a leading and unique "Staking as a Service" platform based on Talin, Estonia and in comparison to StakeCube and FaucetPay, it is a registered limited company regulated by Estonia's Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications that offers a PoS (Proof of Stake) hub-like platform. Therefore, it allows users not only to buy cryptocurrency, exchange it to different coins but also participate in pool staking or masternode staking. The primary mission of MyCointainer is to bring the potential of the decentralized economy to the society, making crypto investing, and earning as simple as web browsing. And all earnings are subject to compound interest at the same time. Another important quality of MyContainer is the fact that the service is a financially regulated service, so it has a legal license to provide e-wallet service and Fiat to crypto transfers. All funds are protected by SAFU as the safety protocol ensures that funds are protected at all times by multiple layers of security so that users can safely store digital assets and stake securely.
MyContainer is owned by Bartosz Pozniak, who has hands on experience in building successful products for array of companies in the last 15 years.
Surprisingly, although MyContainer is a regulated limited company, again no specific KYC is required for the use of the platform as a blockchain microwallet and with a world-class staking rewards distribution engine, MyContainer can support a considerable variety of PoS-based crypto assets. In addition, there are more than 50 PoS coins to choose from, and more quality coins is planned to be added in the future. Apart from the free service, MyContainer offers also a Subscription service callled "MyContainer POWER" with extra staking possibilitites. Precisely, for a subscription of 3.90€ per month, users receive the best staking deal of access to limited Masternodes hosted specially for subscribers while earning 100% of staking rewards. Usually, at that price, a user is able to get 1 or 2 servers in order to host a masternode. With MyContainer, the user can gain access to all of them and MyContainer no longer collects staking fees.
Personally, I used MyContainer to withdraw my PIVX earnings from Pipeflare.io back in 2021 but in order to withdraw them I need to accumulate 40 of them which is unlikely to happen soon so they have remained there as "cryptodust", earning at the same an insigificant daily amount of interest.
Final Thoughs
ExpressCrypto is gone just like CoinPot is also gone 1 year ago. It is no surprise that several impostors such as Coinpot.in and Expresscrypto.co have ALREADY emerged not necessarily as microwallets but in the form of GPT-PTC platforms trying to capitalise the fame and popularity of these 2 microwallets. For those who are interested in withdrawing their faucet earnings without the fuss of KYC verification and the risk of having their personal goverment documents exposed to 3rd parties, the above mentioned microwallets are recommended as some very attractive alternative solutions.
Disclaimer: All information found on this article is for informational purposes only. I do not provide any personal investment advice so please make your own research before proceeding to any investment/trading actions
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