I have a Solana wallet (on testnet) and I read that ATAs are automatically created for the wallet once any other token aside Solana is sent to the wallet. I tried sending some test USDC to my solana wallet through https://usdcfaucet.com/ but no ATA was created for USDC on the wallet. Could it be that ATAs aren't generated automatically and I will have to do it manually myself or the website https://usdcfaucet.com/ doesn't work?
Please help! I am confused! Being stuck here for days
Thanks
no the ATA is not created automatically by Solana protocol.
It can be created automatically if you use a wallet like phantom to send tokens for example, or with command line there is an option to fund token accounts. But if you do it with code (js or rust for example), you have to create & fund the account by yourself if it doesn't exist yet
If you want to quickly create a USDC account for your wallet, you can use the SPL token CLI.
If you don't already have a CLI wallet, be sure to get one and airdrop some SOL to it:
$ solana-keygen new
$ solana -u devnet airdrop 1
And then create the account:
$ spl-token -u devnet create-account <MINT_ADDRESS> --owner <WALLET_ADDRESS> --fee-payer ~/.config/solana/id.json
For USDC, the devnet mint address is 4zMMC9srt5Ri5X14GAgXhaHii3GnPAEERYPJgZJDncDU, according to https://developers.circle.com/developer/docs/usdc-on-testnet#usdc-on-solana-testnet
I think the testnet faucet is unmaintained, so you're better off using devnet.
