Blockchain Development- How To Get Enough Test Ether For Ethereum Smart Contracts.
This article was first published on codedli.com
This may seem like common knowledge, but if I’ve learned anything at all recently, it’s that common knowledge is not common after all. I’m convinced a lot of beginners would find this article valuable.
So, let me state the problem clearly before I provide the solution.
When writing smart contracts to be deployed to the blockchain, you’ll most certainly need to pay for the gas (gas fee) to make the transaction happen. Since your smart contracts and projects would be in an active state of development, you’ll find yourself needing to pay for gas fees many times for this purpose as well as for many of such operations where you’re initiating a blockchain transaction.
If your experiences were like mine, you’ll often find your Ethereum wallet limited in terms of funds to cover these gas fees.
Here, I’ll share how and where to get enough Ether on the Rinkeby Test Network and the Ropsten Test Network to cover a lot of the gas fees for your smart contracts.
The whole process should take less than 5 minutes so I’ll keep this article very short and straight to the point.
I assume you already have a Metamask account. If not, navigate to google web store on google chrome and search for the Metamask extension. Install it and enable the Metamask extension. It’s pretty straightforward. Since this article is not about Metamask, the only valuable piece of advice I’ll add is to keep your twelve-word key safe.
Metamask automatically gives you an Ethereum wallet account upon completion of the short process. The wallet’s Ether balance should be zero, but you need some Ether in it for the purpose I already described above.
So, let’s get to it.
Rinkeby Test Network
In your browser, navigate to https://faucet.rinkeby.io/ which is running on the Rinkeby network.
This faucet gives you 18.75 Ether in your Ethereum wallet. You need to take a few steps to get it though.
Step 1: Go to your Metamask account and copy your wallet address. Make sure you’re on the Rinkeby Test Network.
Step 2: Now, go to your Twitter or Facebook account and make a post that has to contain that wallet address.
“Woah, Woah, wait! Why do I have to do that? I’m not comfortable with that, at all”. I hear you. This is a necessary step but not to worry, I devised a simple means to allay your privacy fears.
According to the website, this is necessary to prevent malicious actors from exhausting all available funds or accumulating enough Ether to mount long-running spam attacks. For this reason, requests are tied to common 3rd party social network accounts.
I prefer Twitter because I don’t have a Facebook account. My quick solution is this. Tweet with the wallet address, copy the post’s URL and, paste it in the required field. Click the “Give me Ether” button and your Ether should be on the way. You can then delete the tweet immediately. This should take less than 1 minute. Before anyone sees your meaningless tweet, you’ll have been done with it.
Whether the tweet contains other sentences or not is of no significance. All that is required is the URL to the tweet containing your wallet address. Check your Metamask wallet and you’ll have received 18.75 Ether. Now, you have enough Ether to pay as much gas fee as required. You can also always repeat the process.
Ropsten Test Network
Navigate to https://faucet.ropsten.be/ and paste your wallet account address just like we did above.
Click the “Send me Ether” button and, you’re done. This time, you’ll get not so much Ether but you can request multiple times after some time interval. Make sure you’re in the Ropsten Test Network, your Ether should reflect within a short period.
That’s it. I hope you find this useful. Again, this is not in any way some kind of discovery or revealed secret whatsoever, but I’m sure it’ll help someone.
Adios!
