Network faucet

[TomasArrachea]

This is an exploratory issue to discuss the potential effects of a network faucet.

A network faucet would require the client to submit transactions with a mint note and the network account would handle them. So, essentially, there is no need to run a backend service with the faucet account generating transactions. There would not be any PoW, rather the fees would avoid spamming.

Since the network faucet requires the users to generate the network transaction by themselves, the frontend would change. It would be in charge of building the transaction with the mint note and then use the wallet-adaptor API (the requestTransaction method) to submit it. This network faucet would require users to have the wallet installed.

Additionally, the faucet CLI could also handle the network account deployment and allow for later modifications on the deployed account.

[bobbinth]

A network faucet would require the client to submit transactions with a mint note and the network account would handle them. So, essentially, there is no need to run a backend service with the faucet account generating transactions. There would not be any PoW, rather the fees would avoid spamming.

I'm not sure this will be sufficient protection - i.e., there still must be some restrictions on who/how can mint the assets. That is, assuming users would get more value from faucet tokens then they would spend in fees, nothing prevents them from submitting thousands (or millions) of notes to drain the faucet.

There could be many was to control minting:

• The faucet could be controlled by an owner (or a set of owners) or are allowed to mint arbitrarily.
• The faucet could have a set of owner who can mint under some specific circumstances.
• The faucet could be permissionless but would mint only under some specific circumstances (e.g., if some PoW is solved).
• Probably may others.

Since the network faucet requires the users to generate the network transaction by themselves, the frontend would change. It would be in charge of building the transaction with the mint note and then use the wallet-adaptor API (the requestTransaction method) to submit it. This network faucet would require users to have the wallet installed.

I almost feel like the requirements are different enough that it would be difficult to combine this repo with the concept of a network faucet - and so, maybe it deserves its own repo. But we can still discuss of how it could work here for now.