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Faucet

A faucet dispenses small amounts of Convex Coins on test networks, so you can experiment without acquiring coins. On the public testnet you rarely call it directly — the SDKs use it to fund new accounts for you (see the Quick Start). This page covers requesting funds explicitly.

Availability​

  • Public testnet — a faucet is available. The current endpoint is https://mikera1337-convex-testnet.hf.space.
  • Local peer — when you run your own peer for development, you control funding directly (see Local Testnets).
  • Production (Protonet, peer.convex.live) — no faucet. Coins must be acquired legitimately (transfer from another account, an exchange, or network rewards).

A peer may also have its faucet disabled. A faucet request to such a peer is refused with 403 Forbidden — treat that as "no faucet on this network".

Security note: any service offering free production coins is a scam. Faucets exist only for testing.

Requesting funds​

Amounts are always in copper (1 CVM = 1,000,000,000 copper). 0.1 CVM — 100,000,000 copper — is plenty for most testing.

TypeScript​

import { Convex, KeyPair } from '@convex-world/convex-ts';

const convex = new Convex('https://mikera1337-convex-testnet.hf.space');

// Fund a new account on creation: pass a faucet amount to createAccount
const keyPair = KeyPair.generate();
const account = await convex.createAccount(keyPair.accountKey, 100_000_000); // 0.1 CVM

// Top up an existing account
await convex.faucet(account.address, 100_000_000);

Python​

from convex_sdk import Convex, KeyPair

convex = Convex('https://mikera1337-convex-testnet.hf.space')

# Faucet-sponsored account creation (the peer's faucet pays the juice)
key_pair = KeyPair()
account = convex.create_account(key_pair)

# Request funds for an account
convex.request_funds(100_000_000, account)  # 0.1 CVM

# Or top up only when needed: requests funds until the balance reaches min_balance
convex.topup_account(account, min_balance=10_000_000)

Account creation is faucet-sponsored​

Creating an account costs juice, which must be paid by an already-funded account. On the public testnet the peer's faucet account sponsors creation, so createAccount / create_account work from a fresh key with no funds. On production there is no faucet, so a new account must be created and funded by an existing account.

Handling an unavailable faucet​

If the faucet is disabled or the peer refuses the request, the call fails (HTTP 403 Forbidden). Handle it as "no faucet here" rather than a transient error:

from convex_sdk.exceptions import ConvexAPIError

try:
    convex.request_funds(100_000_000, account)
except ConvexAPIError as e:
    print(f'Faucet unavailable: {e}')  # likely a production peer or a disabled faucet

Best practices​

  • Request only what you need — 0.1 CVM covers most testing; you rarely need whole coins.
  • Reuse funded accounts — cache a funded test account across sessions rather than re-funding each run; topup_account (Python) makes this easy.
  • Don't depend on faucet availability in scripts — treat a 403 as expected on production or restricted peers.

See Also​