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I am running the Polkadot node in --dev mode for the purpose of running some automated tests of a system that moves DOT between different accounts and check balances. The logic of the system considers a transaction to be "confirmed" when 3 more blocks have been created after the block that contains the transaction.

When running in --dev mode the node creates a block every 6 seconds, this means my tests have to wait at least 18 seconds for a transaction to be confirmed, when there are lot of tests this going to make things very slow. I could reduce the confirmation depth but this is still going to require waiting at least 6 seconds per transaction.

I was wondering if there was any way to increase the rate that the polkadot node creates blocks at?

This question talks about changing the MILLISECS_PER_BLOCK constant in the node-template so I guess it would also be possible to change this value in the polkadot code and build my own customised version for testing, but is it possible to override value via configuration (which, obviously, would be preferable)?

Thanks

messyshed
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  • You can reduce the block time but the consensus algorithm used (AuRa) will get issues at some point. Alternatively there are ManualSeal and InstantSeal consensus algorithms that you could integrate with. https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/tree/538b15fa8dd61f77254abebd5a3336835f4aebe0/client/consensus/manual-seal – apopiak Jun 24 '21 at 10:34
  • Is there a way to enable ManualSeal or InstantSeal in the polkadot node? Or do I have to make changes and build from the source? – messyshed Jun 24 '21 at 15:31
  • https://substrate.dev/recipes/kitchen-node.html is a good reference – Nuke Jul 01 '21 at 19:13

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