Testnet faucet
Enough testnet coins to try a send, a refund and a sweep, without mining a block first. The coins were mined; the faucet just hands some on. It runs in the explorer, and it cannot run on mainnet.
The faucet is a feature of the explorer, which is off by default and cannot be enabled for mainnet. This page says what it is and why it is built that way; the button is over there.
Where it is#
The faucet is a feature of the testnet explorer, not of this site. It is the explorer that indexes the chain, so it is the explorer that already knows the network it is on — and that is what makes the one guarantee below checkable rather than promised.
Bring a persistent (0x02) address.
zcd wallet address --key yourkey.json prints one.
Why it is not on this page#
This site is very nearly static: files on disk, served by nginx, and nothing here holds a key. A faucet has to hold one. Putting it where the chain is already being read keeps the spending key in the one process that can check, for itself, which chain it is spending on.
That check is the point. The explorer only accepts a set of chain parameters after recomputing the consensus root from them and finding it matches the one the node served — and the consensus root is the digest two nodes must agree on before they will speak at all. So when the faucet asks “am I allowed to run here?”, the answer comes from a value the network itself pins rather than from a line in a configuration file.
Mainnet has no faucet#
And will not have one. Mainnet has no premine and no privileged distribution: every coin on it comes from mining. The feature is refused for mainnet three times over, and each refusal would be enough on its own:
- It is off by default. No flag, no key, no routes.
- Turning it on requires naming a network, and the name
mainnetis refused — as is mainnet’s chain id, read out of the embedded parameter set rather than written as a literal, so it cannot drift. - The named network is checked against the chain the explorer is serving. A configuration copied from the testnet host to the mainnet host produces a process that will not start.
Nothing is minted for the testnet faucet either. It holds an ordinary key and signs an ordinary
transfer through the same wallet/session the command line
uses, so its spends run every rule zcd wallet send runs, and its balance sits in the
explorer like anybody else’s.
One claim per block#
A certificate carries the state it read. Two certificates built against the same reading of the faucet’s cell are two claims on one balance — the fold applies whichever arrives first and the other skips, burning the skip fee. So the faucet pays one claim at a time, the testnet target is thirty seconds, and the explorer shows you the queue rather than a spinner.
If you need coins faster than a queue can hand them over, you do not want a faucet. You want a miner, which has no queue and no operator.
No captcha#
Your browser solves a small proof of work instead — a second or two of one core. A captcha would put a third party in front of every visitor and hand that third party the address each of them is about to fund, which is not a trade worth making to be marginally better at telling a human from a robot on a network whose coins are worth nothing.
These coins are worth nothing#
By design, and permanently. The testnet can be reset from genesis, which is what a testnet is for, and its chain id is allocated once and never reused — so a reset does not even leave the old coins on a chain somebody could claim was the real one. Anyone offering to buy or sell them is running a scam that does not even need a story.