Mining Modes

In Katana, mining modes determine how frequent blocks are produced. By default, a new block is automatically created as soon as a transaction is received.

Interval Mining

You can switch from the default mining behaviour to interval mining, where a new block is created at a fixed time interval selected by the user. To enable this mode of mining, use the --block-time <MILLISECONDS> flag, as demonstrated in the following example.

# Produces a new block for every 10 seconds
katana --block-time 10000

On-demand Mining

On-demand mining is another mode of mining that allows users to manually create a new block. This mode is useful for testing purposes or when you want to create a block at a specific time. New blocks can only be created by calling the generateBlock RPC method of the dev namespace.

In on-demand mining mode, transactions will be executed after receiving them but blocks will not be mined until you have called the generateBlock RPC method. Upon calling it, a new block will be created and all the pending transactions will be included in it.

To enable on-demand mining, use the --no-mining flag.

katana --no-mining