# Conflicts: # cmd/faucet/faucet.go
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Faucet
The faucet
is a simplistic web application with the goal of distributing small amounts of Ether in private and test networks.
Users need to post their Ethereum addresses to fund in a Twitter status update or public Facebook post and share the link to the faucet. The faucet will in turn deduplicate user requests and send the Ether. After a funding round, the faucet prevents the same user requesting again for a pre-configured amount of time, proportional to the amount of Ether requested.
Operation
The faucet
is a single binary app (everything included) with all configurations set via command line flags and a few files.
First thing's first, the faucet
needs to connect to an Ethereum network, for which it needs the necessary genesis and network infos. Each of the following flags must be set:
--genesis
is a path to a file containin the networkgenesis.json
--network
is the devp2p network id used during connection--bootnodes
is a list ofenode://
ids to join the network through
The faucet
will use the les
protocol to join the configured Ethereum network and will store its data in $HOME/.faucet
(currently not configurable).
Funding
To be able to distribute funds, the faucet
needs access to an already funded Ethereum account. This can be configured via:
--account.json
is a path to the Ethereum account's JSON key file--account.pass
is a path to a text file with the decryption passphrase
The faucet is able to distribute various amounts of Ether in exchange for various timeouts. These can be configured via:
--faucet.amount
is the number of Ethers to send by default--faucet.minutes
is the time to wait before allowing a rerequest--faucet.tiers
is the funding tiers to support (x3 time, x2.5 funds)
Sybil protection
To prevent the same user from exhausting funds in a loop, the faucet
ties requests to social networks and captcha resolvers.
Captcha protection uses Google's invisible ReCaptcha, thus the faucet
needs to run on a live domain. The domain needs to be registered in Google's systems to retrieve the captcha API token and secrets. After doing so, captcha protection may be enabled via:
--captcha.token
is the API token for ReCaptcha--captcha.secret
is the API secret for ReCaptcha
Sybil protection via Twitter requires an API key as of 15th December, 2020. To obtain it, a Twitter user must be upgraded to developer status and a new Twitter App deployed with it. The app's Bearer
token is required by the faucet to retrieve tweet data:
--twitter.token
is the Bearer token forv2
API access--twitter.token.v1
is the Bearer token forv1
API access
Sybil protection via Facebook uses the website to directly download post data thus does not currently require an API configuration.
Miscellaneous
Beside the above - mostly essential - CLI flags, there are a number that can be used to fine tune the faucet
's operation. Please see faucet --help
for a full list.