### Configure your node to connect to the Neon network
In this phase of the testnet, miners will be burning BTC to participate in leader election. In order to mine, you'll need to configure your node with a BTC keychain, and you'll need to fund it with BTC. We're providing a BTC faucet to make it easy to run a miner.
You'll need to update your node's configuration to connect to the public Neon testnet.
Let's start by generating a keypair:
In the `stacks-blockchain` repository, open up the file `testnet/follower-config.toml`.
```bash
cargo run --bin blockstack-cli generate-sk --testnet
Open up the file `testnet/Stacks.toml`. Find the section that starts with `[burnchain]`. Update that section so that it looks like this:
Next, find the `peer_host` line in the `[burnchain]` section, and update it to:
```toml
[burnchain]
chain = "bitcoin"
mode = "neon"
peer_host = "127.0.0.1" # todo(ludo): update URL with neon.blockstack.org when deployed
burnchain_op_tx_fee = 1000
commit_anchor_block_within = 10000
rpc_port = 3000
peer_port = 18444
peer_host = "35.245.58.246"
```
**TODO**: update `peer_host`, and how do you specify your BTC keychain?
### Run your node
### Running your mining node
You're all set to run a node that connects to the Neon network.
Now that you're all set up, you can run your miner. In the command line, run:
Back in the command line, run:
```bash
cargo testnet ./testnet/Stacks.toml
cargo testnet ./testnet/follower-conf.toml
```
You should see some logs that look something like the this:
```
Starting testnet with config ./testnet/follower-conf.toml...
Transactions can be posted on the endpoint:
POST http://127.0.0.1:9001/v2/transactions
INFO [1587602447.879] [src/chainstate/stacks/index/marf.rs:732] First-ever block 0f9188f13cb7b2c71f2a335e3a4fc328bf5beb436012afca590b1a11466e2206
```
**TODO**: some way of confirming that the miner is running - expected logs, explorer, etc?
Awesome! Your node is now connected to the Neon network. Your node will receive new blocks when they are produced, and you can use your node's RPC API to send transactions, fetch information for contracts and accounts, and more.