# Join Testnets

This doc is for developers, and it aims to show how they can join the PlasmaChain Testnet and deploy their smart contracts. If you are looking for information on how to run nodes or to become a validator, please checkout our Validator Guide.

Prerequisite

• Loom installed. See instructions.

# Generate a private key

Once Loom is installed, you need to generate a private key with Loom and get your public address:

./loom genkey -k priv_key -a pub_key

You should see something like this printed out in the console:

local address: 0x3B334bEd1e7d3e7d9214495120160D9236aCbC31
local address base64: OzNL7R59Pn2SFElRIBYNkjasvDE=

This will create two files named priv_key and pub_key. The priv_key file contains your private key that you'll use to deploy contracts to the DAppChain.

# Deploy Truffle Example to a Testnet

1. Make sure you have node and yarn/npm installed.

2. Obtain the testnet URL from PlasmaChain Testnets page

3. Get the source code from the Truffle DAppChain repo:

   git clone https://github.com/loomnetwork/truffle-dappchain-example
   cd truffle-dappchain-example
   

4. Copy the private key to the root directory of the example repo:

   cp ../priv_key extdev_private_key
   

5. If you wish to deploy the example contracts to extdev-plasma-us1 skip this step. Otherwise, add the network you wish to deploy to in truffle-config.js.

6. Install node modules:

   yarn
   

7. Deploy to extdev by running:

   yarn deploy:extdev