Testnet Faucet

[mocacinno]

Informational message from now on

I had to shut down my faucet due to the fact i stopped renting a dedicated server (prices were increased to a level where it became to much for a hobby). You can always ask for tBTC directly if you need it.

From now on, i'll be giving enough tBTC to test out "normal" stuff on the testnet... Since the average fee is 1 sat/vbyte, you'll need about 150-300 sats to pay the fee for a transaction, that's 0.000003 tBTC. I figure normal tests require about 10 transactions, which equals 0.00003 tBTC in fees. This amount, plus some value to transact without running into the dust limit made me decide to give out 0.0005 tBTC to people asking for it when they only give a minimal explanation (from now on).

If you want more, make a clear case: what are you actually planning on doing, why do you need more than 0.0005 tBTC, why can't you use regtest. You don't need to harm your privacy, but i'll need more info than just the basics

I'll also be batching payments (if possible) and i will not give any guarantees... If i suspect you from abusing the tBTC i gave you, or if i suspect there's a high chance you'll spam/scam/multiaccount, or if i'm just not @ the office for a couple of days/weeks, or i forget or overlook applications, no payments won't go out.


I recently tried to help a couple guys that were in need of some tBTC, and i found out there are only a handfull of relatively stable tBTC faucets out there... That's why i decided to take a stab at making one myself:

https://tbtc.mocacinno.com/

Following things are "features", not bugs:

• it has a lot of ads: i'll use part of the ad income and/or tips to rent some hashrate (or buy an old ASIC) an mine some tBTC to fill the faucet's wallet. The rest of the tips will go to hosting costs and electricity costs while mining... If the faucet ever runs completely dry, and there is no income or tBTC donations, the project will stop...
• it's behind cloudflare: it's only tBTC... Don't use it to do anything illegal because big brother might be watching
• it's ugly: i'm not a designer
• it only pays once per hour: i'm trying not to waste tBTC in fees since the hashrate on the testnet is relatively high, so tBTC isn't that easy to mine
• it's missing some security headers: it's only a tbtc faucet... I didn't put much effort into securing it
• it's loading external content: it's only a tbtc faucet... I didn't put much effort into securing it

If you run into any other bugs or potential weaknesses, let me know

What could you do with tBTC?

• Use it when you develop a new script/app/...
• Use it to test the lightning network
• Use it as a learning tool: there are loads of tBTC wallets (including, but not limited to: hardware wallets, desktop wallets, mobile wallets and paper wallets). Point newbies towards these when they have the need to learn how to perform certain actions in a risk-free environment

[/s]

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

This is very useful for new comers or developers in the space it has become quite the pain to obtain tbtc over the years with many of the old faucet's now gone and some of the testnet pools closed i'm sure this will become a popular venue for the dev's to get some tbtc.

Great work! +2 merit!

[FractalEncrypt]

Wonderful, will test it out! Thanks for the contribution.

[maurobera66]

hello dear i need 2 TBTC can you sell me thath amount?

[mocacinno]

hello dear i need 2 TBTC can you sell me thath amount?

Hi,

I've answered this question in your thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5223939.msg53790021#msg53790021

But just in case somebody else has the same question: tBTC is without value, so i'm not willing to sell any tBTC. However, if you need a large amount of tBTC, i'm certainly willing to lend tBTC to anybody who is in need, however, i'd need some actual collateral for such a loan, since i don't want people to get tBTC and never return it...

[aa7356]

Wonderful, will test it out! Thanks for the contribution.

we dont' have Armory Wallet 'offline tnet'  yet, do we?

[mocacinno]

we dont' have Armory Wallet 'offline tnet'  yet, do we?

I'm not an Armory user (i played around with it a looooooong time ago, but i kept using core afterwards), but a quick google turns up the following:
https://www.bitcoinarmory.com/troubleshooting/#how-do-i-setup-armory-on-the-test-network-testnet

[aa7356]

we dont' have Armory Wallet 'offline tnet'  yet, do we?

I'm not an Armory user (i played around with it a looooooong time ago, but i kept using core afterwards), but a quick google turns up the following:
https://www.bitcoinarmory.com/troubleshooting/#how-do-i-setup-armory-on-the-test-network-testnet

yep.. well so I guess we don't have t-net yet (btw why t-net diff mining so high?)

Sometimes I think bitcoin just as a coin..

https://i.imgur.com/zwvtb1n.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine
 

[Coinbees]

Its a great idea I may come to see you soon. Do you have a minimum / maximum amount?

[dkbit98]

I think that I noticed one typo mistake on that website.
You may need to correct this

What will you to with the tBTC?

Would also be nice to have a bit higher amounts on tBTC

[buwaytress]

Fantastic work, moca, and yeah I've even tried to help in the past collect enough testnet coins for someone else but too many bitcoiners are like me, unable to code =\. That said, I believe most of these projects died out after a while simply because they weren't replenished, so it's also really helpful to just request people to send back the coins to the faucet once they're done testing - maybe make it more visible right next to claim!

[mocacinno]

Its a great idea I may come to see you soon. Do you have a minimum / maximum amount?

At the moment, it's a fixed amount of 0.0005 (50.000 tSatoshi's), i'll give an explanation under dkbit98's question  

I think that I noticed one typo mistake on that website.
You may need to correct this

What will you to with the tBTC?

Would also be nice to have a bit higher amounts on tBTC

typo fixed   Thanks for notifying me... I'm a dyslectic dutch speaking system engineer, it's hard for me to write a single sentence that doesn't contain spelling errors, let alone create a complete page, so all spellchecking help is more than welcome!

As for the higher amounts: i'm currently in the phase of testing the waters. The main goal of this faucet is to earn enough from a-ads, my affiliate links, the voluntary web mining after the claim and tips to either rent some hashrate or buy a second hand ASIC to mine on the testnet (i'm trying to reach a break even point, i'm not interested in making money from this faucet, but i don't want to invest to much of my own money in it either). The big "problem" is that the coinbase reward on the testnet is low (0.39 tBTC + fees) and the hashrate on the test network is high. Basically, most tBTC has already been mined, the utxo's are sitting in the chainstate db forever, nobody is giving them away, nobody is using them, but several people are still mining on the testnet using ASIC's... So i have to figure out how much i can give away to reach a status quo where the income =~ the cost (tBTC is worthless, but this doesn't mean it's free to mine).

In all honestly, 50.000 tSatoshi's is a low amount, the odds of the claim amount rising to 100.000 in the next couple of weeks/months is big, but everything will depend on how much tBTC is returned to me, and how much income i get from the site.

Fantastic work, moca, and yeah I've even tried to help in the past collect enough testnet coins for someone else but too many bitcoiners are like me, unable to code =\. That said, I believe most of these projects died out after a while simply because they weren't replenished, so it's also really helpful to just request people to send back the coins to the faucet once they're done testing - maybe make it more visible right next to claim!

I do really hope people will return the tBTC, like i said above: tBTC is worthless, but that doesn't make it easy to come by, so the more worthless tBTC is returned, the more people i can help.

I incorporated your tip, i've put my line begging the people to return the tBTC next to the claim button aswell

[aplistir]

The big "problem" is that the coinbase reward on the testnet is low (0.39 tBTC + fees) and the hashrate on the test network is high. Basically, most tBTC has already been mined,

I do really hope people will return the tBTC, like i said above: tBTC is worthless, but that doesn't make it easy to come by, so the more worthless tBTC is returned, the more people i can help.

Wow. I didn't know the block reward was already THAT low in testnet  

Do you have an address for donating extra coins? I should have a little less than 4 coins somewhere.

Testnet coins being hard to get defeats the whole purpose of testnet. Don't you think it would be a good time to reset the whole testnet (or just start a new one on a side), so that anyone can play with it as much as they want. Or are we "testing" what will happen when block rewards end altogether?

What would be needed to start a new testnet and make it public? Just one machine mining it and keeping it alive? And a faucet for the coins. And maybe a block explorer for it.
Running a new testnet and a faucet would be cheaper than mining the "old" testnet.

I don't thing anyone would have any reason to oppose having a sizeable pre-mine for the faucet, say 1M coins. (since they are worthless)
 

[Saint-loup]

The big "problem" is that the coinbase reward on the testnet is low (0.39 tBTC + fees) and the hashrate on the test network is high. Basically, most tBTC has already been mined,

I do really hope people will return the tBTC, like i said above: tBTC is worthless, but that doesn't make it easy to come by, so the more worthless tBTC is returned, the more people i can help.

Wow. I didn't know the block reward was already THAT low in testnet 

Do you have an address for donating extra testnet coins? I should have a little less than 4 coins somewhere.

Testnet coins being hard to get defeats the whole purpose of testnet. Don't you think it would be a good time to reset the whole testnet, so that anyone can play with it as much as they want. Or are we "testing" what will happen when block rewards end altogether? The risk of someone asking money for testnet coins is getting higher

What would be needed to start a new testnet and make it public? Just one machine mining it and keeping it alive? And a faucet for the coins. And maybe a block explorer for it.
Running a new testnet and a faucet could be even cheaper than mining the "old" testnet.

Maybe bitcointalk should launch a campaign to ask people to send back their tBTC to faucets... 
50 000 sats by claim I think it's the same amount you could earn on "mainnet" faucets few years ago 

[BrewMaster]

Don't you think it would be a good time to reset the whole testnet (or just start a new one on a side), so that anyone can play with it as much as they want.

i was thinking the same when i found out about the current reward, but you have to realize that testnet difficulty drops to minimum quite often and miners can potential burst mine lots of blocks to get a lot of reward in total.

additionally there currently are at least half a dozen working testnet faucets that pay from 100k to 1 mil satoshi per claims that are ranging from 15 min to 12 hours. these amounts are more than enough for majority of tests that developers want to perform.
for anything that requires any higher amounts (which are extremely rare cases) they can always run their own testnet using a self contained network (eg. testnet in a box) and run their tests.

[mocacinno]

--snip--
Wow. I didn't know the block reward was already THAT low in testnet  

Do you have an address for donating extra coins? I should have a little less than 4 coins somewhere.

Testnet coins being hard to get defeats the whole purpose of testnet. Don't you think it would be a good time to reset the whole testnet (or just start a new one on a side), so that anyone can play with it as much as they want. Or are we "testing" what will happen when block rewards end altogether?

What would be needed to start a new testnet and make it public? Just one machine mining it and keeping it alive? And a faucet for the coins. And maybe a block explorer for it.
Running a new testnet and a faucet would be cheaper than mining the "old" testnet.

I don't thing anyone would have any reason to oppose having a sizeable pre-mine for the faucet, say 1M coins. (since they are worthless)
 

Yup, the block reward is THAT low  
To be honest, i've already taught the same thing a couple of times: maybe it's time to reset the testnet again... It's a TESTnet afterall, people need tBTC for tests, and it's a bummer if they can't just CPU mine some tBTC. I have no idear why people insist on running old ASIC's on the testnet to begin with. The stash of tBTC i currently have was CPU mined a long time ago, but nowadays is simply impossible. That's why i need all those adds/affiliate links/begging for tips/donating cpu power/..., i simply need to either rent some hashrate from miningrigrentals or buy an old asic (an S7 or something) if i want to replenish my faucet, and i don't want to pay these costs out of my own pocket.

As for a donation address for tBTC: sure
This address was generated by my testnet node, the one running the testnet hot wallet, so all donations go directly into funding the faucet: 2NBsursJUfmepDu3WT7GBRLrL6AdHSPC9V4

--snip--
Maybe bitcointalk should launch a campaign to ask people to send back their tBTC to faucets...  
50 000 sats by claim I think it's the same amount you could earn on "mainnet" faucets few years ago  

Yeah, i realise 50.000 is a tad low... It should be sufficient for a couple basic tests tough... I dont think you need more tBTC if you're trying out creating a testnet paper wallet and sweeping it in testnet electrum, or setting up a testnet lightning wallet, or testing out some basic json-rpc calls on your testnet node... However, i realise that if you want to test a new mixing algorithm, 50.000 tSat is just dust.

I do plan on increasing the claim amount in the future, after i see if this model is self-sustainable.

A campaign to urge devs to send the tBTC back to one of the working testnet faucets would be great... I do think most people will have lost the funds, or they'll just ignore such questions... But if only a few devs would do this, it would probably make a huge difference.

--snip--
i was thinking the same when i found out about the current reward, but you have to realize that testnet difficulty drops to minimum quite often and miners can potential burst mine lots of blocks to get a lot of reward in total.

additionally there currently are at least half a dozen working testnet faucets that pay from 100k to 1 mil satoshi per claims that are ranging from 15 min to 12 hours. these amounts are more than enough for majority of tests that developers want to perform.
for anything that requires any higher amounts (which are extremely rare cases) they can always run their own testnet using a self contained network (eg. testnet in a box) and run their tests.

Half a dozen seems about right, I found 6 (including mine), that's why i created this one, testnet faucets are important, they give people a no-risk tool to develop and learn.

The testnet difficulty is peculiar. It drops to 1 if no block has been found for 20 minutes. However, if the difficulty retargets after the the diff has been dropped to 1, it'll stay 1 for 2016 blocks, than it'll double for 2016 blocks, then it'll double again,...
However, if you're cpu mining, and you're competing against an ASIC, this just doesn't matter. The asic will find thousands of blocks (difficulty 1) before you've found only 1 (with your CPU). Sure, mining moves faster, but you still need a decent hashrate if you want to mine some tBTC.

The regtest is great, but it's not really a network. It's fine for debugging your json-rpc api calls, but most of the time i used it, it did not suffice for "real world" simulations, so you actually do need the test network for that...

[natsu_dev]

I recently tried to help a couple guys that were in need of some tBTC, and i found out there are only a handfull of relatively stable tBTC faucets out there... That's why i decided to take a stab at making one myself:

https://tbtc.mocacinno.com/

Following things are "features", not bugs:

• it has a lot of ads: i'll use part of the ad income and/or tips to rent some hashrate (or buy an old ASIC) an mine some tBTC to fill the faucet's wallet. The rest of the tips will go to hosting costs and electricity costs while mining... If the faucet ever runs completely dry, and there is no income or tBTC donations, the project will stop...
• it's behind cloudflare: it's only tBTC... Don't use it to do anything illegal because big brother might be watching
• it's ugly: i'm not a designer
• it only pays once per hour: i'm trying not to waste tBTC in fees since the hashrate on the testnet is relatively high, so tBTC isn't that easy to mine
• it's missing some security headers: it's only a tbtc faucet... I didn't put much effort into securing it
• it's loading external content: it's only a tbtc faucet... I didn't put much effort into securing it

If you run into any other bugs or potential weaknesses, let me know

What could you do with tBTC?

• Use it when you develop a new script/app/...
• Use it to test the lightning network
• Use it as a learning tool: there are loads of tBTC wallets (including, but not limited to: hardware wallets, desktop wallets, mobile wallets and paper wallets). Point newbies towards these when they have the need to learn how to perform certain actions in a risk-free environment

Hi Mocaccino and to others who have big amounts of test bitcoins....If you could spare me some for my testing I would be glad. I tried Mocaccino's faucet, however it is just giving out very small amounts. I need around 20, but the more the merrier. I will send them back after my test.

bitcoin test address: 2MxXi7jjGQiR1wsFSZy2KxRV6TA4Teod6qB

Thanks!

[DaveF]

Hi Mocaccino and to others who have big amounts of test bitcoins....If you could spare me some for my testing I would be glad. I tried Mocaccino's faucet, however it is just giving out very small amounts. I need around 20, but the more the merrier. I will send them back after my test.

bitcoin test address: 2MxXi7jjGQiR1wsFSZy2KxRV6TA4Teod6qB

Thanks!

Try using regtest to generate as much TESTNET BTC as you need.
It only takes a few seconds to be done because it's a preset low difficulty.

More information / detailed instructions here: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-examples#regtest-mode

This should let you do any testing you need.

-Dave

[mocacinno]

Hi Mocaccino and to others who have big amounts of test bitcoins....If you could spare me some for my testing I would be glad. I tried Mocaccino's faucet, however it is just giving out very small amounts. I need around 20, but the more the merrier. I will send them back after my test.

bitcoin test address: 2MxXi7jjGQiR1wsFSZy2KxRV6TA4Teod6qB

Thanks!

Try using regtest to generate as much TESTNET BTC as you need.
It only takes a few seconds to be done because it's a preset low difficulty.

More information / detailed instructions here: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-examples#regtest-mode

This should let you do any testing you need.

-Dave

Defenately... If regtest suits your needs, i'd go with it... Regtest should cover ~90% of the usecases (just my gut feeling, not an actual study).
As for natsu_dev's request, i barely have enough tBTC to fund my faucet as it stands, so i can no longer part with them anymore.

[n0nce]

Hey there; I am mining some tBTC currently and was wondering whether you need some for your faucet.
I've also been looking for another thread to be honest, which I can't find - maybe you can help me. I remember that someone else (I thought it was BlackHatCoiner; but can't find such a thread by him) also had a 'faucet', but forum-based - so it was not an automated technical solution like yours - and wanted to offer coins as well. Maybe you remember who it was, that would be great!