Get free ANE

Testnet ANE is free and unlimited, and the faucet is an API rather than a web form, so scripts and agents can top themselves up.

Tier	Amount	Limit	How
Anonymous	1 ANE	Once a day per address, and per client IP	A small proof of work
API key	10 ANE	100 calls a day per key	Authorization: Bearer <key>

The live values are always at GET https://rpc.testnet.16ane.net/faucet/v1/info.

Anonymous: solve a proof of work

1. GET /v1/challenge returns a token, a difficulty (leading zero bits) and when it expires.
2. Find a decimal nonce so that sha256("<token>:<address>:<nonce>") starts with that many zero bits. <address> is the recipient in lowercase 0x hex.
3. POST /v1/fund with {"address", "challenge": <token>, "nonce"}.

This script does all three with the Python standard library (save it as faucet.py):

# Usage: python3 faucet.py 0xYourAddress
import hashlib, json, sys, urllib.request

FAUCET = "https://rpc.testnet.16ane.net/faucet"
address = sys.argv[1].lower()

def call(path, body=None):
    req = urllib.request.Request(FAUCET + path, data=json.dumps(body).encode() if body else None,
                                 headers={"content-type": "application/json", "user-agent": "16ane-docs-example"})
    try:
        return json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=30))
    except urllib.error.HTTPError as e:
        return json.load(e)  # errors are JSON too: {"error": "<code>", "message": "..."}

ch = call("/v1/challenge")
need = ch["difficulty"]
nonce = 0
while True:
    digest = hashlib.sha256(f'{ch["token"]}:{address}:{nonce}'.encode()).digest()
    if int.from_bytes(digest, "big") >> (256 - need) == 0:
        break
    nonce += 1

print(call("/v1/fund", {"address": address, "challenge": ch["token"], "nonce": str(nonce)}))

{'tx_hash': '0xac17…1b8e', 'address': '0x8de0…eddf', 'amount_wei': '1000000000000000000', 'tier': 'anonymous'}

The ANE arrives in the next block or two (6 seconds each). Each challenge works once, for one address, within five minutes.

API key

For CI and agents that need more, an API key skips the proof of work:

curl -sS https://rpc.testnet.16ane.net/faucet/v1/fund \
  -H "authorization: Bearer $FAUCET_API_KEY" -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"address":"0xYourAddress"}'

To get a key, open an issue saying what it’s for.

When it says no

Errors are JSON with a stable error code. Branch on it:

error	Meaning
cooldown	This address or client was funded recently. retry_after says when to try again
pow_insufficient, challenge_invalid, challenge_expired, challenge_used	Get a new challenge and solve it again
invalid_address	Not a 0x address
quota_exhausted	The API key’s daily calls are used up
send_failed	The node is busy or down; nothing was used up, try again later

The full contract is in the Faucet API reference.