pk910/powfaucet

PoWFaucet is a tool for running a faucet on Ethereum test networks. A faucet is a website that gives away small amounts of fake cryptocurrency to developers so they can test their applications without spending real money. Ethereum has several test networks, parallel copies of the blockchain where the coins have no real value, and developers need these test coins to pay for transaction fees during development. The problem faucets face is that bots can flood them with requests and drain the wallet before real developers can get coins. PoWFaucet addresses this by offering multiple protection methods that make automated abuse harder. The most distinctive one is proof-of-work mining: visitors must run a computation in their browser that takes some time and CPU power, so mass-requesting coins becomes expensive in computing resources. This is why the word mining appears in the README, though the README is explicit that no new coins are created by this process. It is purely a spam-prevention mechanism. Other protection modules include CAPTCHA challenges, IP address tracking, checking whether the requester holds a balance on the real Ethereum mainnet, and integration with Gitcoin Passport, a system that lets people prove their identity through social accounts. The faucet is modular, so an operator can mix and match which protections to enable. The project is designed to be self-hosted. Whoever runs the faucet must deposit the coins they want to distribute into the faucet wallet themselves. The README links to a wiki with installation and configuration instructions. The author runs several public instances for Ethereum test networks including Sepolia, Hoodi, and Ephemery, all linked from the README. The project is licensed under the AGPL v3 open-source license and accepts bug reports and pull requests on GitHub.