Explaining Testnets and Faucets

What are Testnets and Faucets?

Are you looking to interact with a development version of a contract, or want to roll out your own and check if it's working properly? Testnet (or sometimes called Devnet) are networks which act in the same way as the main network (mainnet), or enable some extra features before they become available on the mainnet.

The intent behind these networks is to allow developers and users to test smart contracts in a controlled environment with its own tokens so users don't have to pay valuable mainnet tokens: on a devnet then, it is possible to mint native tokens, or get them from a faucet.

In the case of Fetch.ai, the testnet is called Dorado and we'll see how to get these testnet tokens.

One thing to note: testnet tokens may not have the same denomination as the mainnet ones. In this case, the dorado denom is atestfet while the mainnet denom is afet. This can be a source of errors in contract development, so please remember it.

Getting testnet tokens from the block explorer

The process is simple:
1- Go on the Fetch block explorer for the Dorado testnet https://explore-dorado.fetch.ai/
2- On the top right, click "Get Funds" button
3- Set your address as the beneficiary and click "Add Funds"

And that's all it takes! You should get a message confirming that the funds have been sent.
The denomination for the testnet token is TestFet, and currently the faucet provides a random amount every time you request funds.

What to do with these tokens?

A testnet acts much like the actual mainnet that you are used to, this means that all main features of the chain (including staking and proposals).

FetchStation provides support for both testnet and mainnet interaction.
You can find FetchStation on Dorado here, which will allow you to interact with governance and validators easily.

We also provide a no-code interface to interact with deployed contracts. From there, you can access contract data, or even easily create your own token on the Testnet!

To interact with contracts, you'll need to know the address of the contract, which you should be able to find in the relevant docs.
In the case of AzoyaLabs, we track our contracts addresses in our docs: https://docs.azoyalabs.com/