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ChainMovers
autocoins feature
Problem statement The testnet faucet is near impossible to use (often rate limited even when trying once every other day).
Proposed solution
- There is no "flooding a server with requests"... instead "it just work" after installing Suibase.
- A centralized service (develop and maintain by Suibase) would push one Sui once a day to one address for every "proof-of-installation" of Suibase. This automated service is only for setups that remains active (e.g. running up-to-date suibase-daemon).
Update
05/23/25: Mysten Labs is making progress on the faucet reliability... but it is likely the cat&mouse game against the bots will remain.
Autocoins has been submitted as an alternative "experimental bot-resistant protocol" for Sui Hackathon 2025. Stay tune!
06/10/25: Autocoins feature was not selected for the hackathon, but I am grateful for Mysten/Foundation to share constructive concerns and idea (Sui Identity).
Cut&Paste of feedback:
• Autocoins is a clever, developer-first experiment that rethinks how testnet resources are allocated—favoring consistency and fairness over spam-prone faucets. To boost its impact, make the dev eligibility system more transparent and explore integration with Sui identity primitives. It’s a solid infrastructure add-on that could evolve into a best practice for dev onboarding.
• Interesting "proof-of-work" approach using the ability to access specific bytes on demand to deter bots. The 25 day limitation before receiving daily deposits seems quite restrictive though. This approach may also be over-engineering what should be a simple developer tool, and instead highlights flaws with the current faucet service. There is also a centralization risk if every builder developing on testnet needs to depend on Suibase for sui emissions.
08/21/25: Implementation mostly completed, but putting this on backburner as the source of "free" sui on testnet is uncertain. This feature will now evolve to distribute a new "Suibase Token" as reward to real suibase devs. The token will give access to "pro tier" feature for gRPC, GraphQL, Seal, Walrus etc... stay tune!
User Experience
This is a "best-effort" background service and most of the complexity and failures are hidden.
"testnet status" will show one of these:
Autocoins: OK (0x1234..abcd) ( 5 deposits) 100% downloaded
-> Everything is ready and deposit are done regularly.
Autocoins: DISABLED
-> Service is disabled. Do 'testnet autocoins enable' to change that.
Autocoins: DOWNLOADING (0x1234..abcd) ( 0 deposits) 10% downloaded
-> Data is downloading for proof-of-installation. Deposit not done regularly.
Autocoins: VERIFYING (0x1234..abcd) ( 0 deposits) 100% downloaded
-> Deposit suspended until protocol verify the installation.
Autocoins: DOWN (0x1234..abcd) ( 9 deposits) 100% downloaded
-> No internet connectivity or other internal errors.
Autocoins: STOPPED (0x1234..abcd) ( 9 deposits) 100% downloaded
-> User did a "testnet stop" to stop all services.
Autocoins: NOT RUNNING (0x1234..abcd) ( 9 deposits) 100% downloaded
-> When background service is unexpectedly not running. Do "testnet start" to fix this.
"testnet autocoins <command>": - "enable/disable" command. - "set" to change the deposit address (default to active-address) - "purge-data" to free disk space. - "status" to see config, last deposit date etc...
Debugging Logs in ~/suibase/workdirs/common/logs/suibase-daemon.log
Proof-of-installation Storage Files are located in ~/suibase/workdirs/common/autocoins/data
It might be frustrating to wait 25 days before observing the first daily deposit. Therefore the service is tweak to make it highly probable that at least one deposit is done within the first 2 weeks.
That probability is ~proportional to how many days (20MB each) have been stored on the user setup. After 25 days (500 MB), the deposit should be done daily (no reduced probability).
Nice one! It's really hard to develop Walrus stuff without Testnet Sui coins, so we definitely need to do something about it.
That looks great. We did a bunch of fixes to faucet.sui.io, so now every user should be able to get a few testnet SUI at anytime (still rate limited per day, but it should work).
@stefan-mysten
Using an up-to-date chrome browser, getting:
Tried both https://faucet.sui.io and https://faucet.sui.io/?address=0x7c3c5899e5443c6bb2c4080b6ca23bdf3856bd50d0dabfc524e1f6b6b84565c2
The error was on first try (probably not an IP related rate limiting, have not tried the faucet for weeks).
Yes, this is a check for bots by Vercel. Did it work on a subsequent try?
Yes, this is a check for bots by Vercel. Did it work on a subsequent try?
No. I tried ~8 times up to now. Including twice with firefox which returns a different code:
Interesting! Let me disable it for now. Can you try again @mario4tier?
@mario4tier thanks for trying. Looking forward to the autocoin feature as well 🚀