Binaries - Parallax Technical Documentation

Parallax ships as four cooperating binaries, mirroring the layout used by Bitcoin Core. Building from source (make parallax) produces all four under ./build/bin/; distribution packages install them onto $PATH.

The four binaries

Binary	Role
`parallaxd`	Full-node daemon. Owns chain data, the JSON-RPC server, mining, peer networking and all on-disk state operations (init, import/export, account keystore, database maintenance, attach/console, snapshot, dumpgenesis, etc.). All node flags such as `--http`, `--ws`, `--mine`, `--dev`, `--datadir`, `--syncmode` and `--daemon` are passed to `parallaxd`.
`parallax-cli`	JSON-RPC client. A small sugar binary that speaks to a running `parallaxd` over IPC/HTTP and exposes ergonomic subcommands (`info`, `chaininfo`, `peers`, `balance`, `gettx`, `sendraw`, `startmining`, `newaccount`, `unlock`, `sign`, `loglevel`, …) instead of raw JSON-RPC payloads.
`parallax-wallet`	Offline wallet tool. Operates directly on keystore files on disk and never talks to a running node, making it safe for air-gapped, cold-signing workflows (`list`, `new`, `import`, `dump`, `signtx`, `signmessage`, …). See parallax-wallet for the full command reference.
`parallax`	Multi-call wrapper. Dispatches `parallax node <args>` to `parallaxd`, `parallax rpc <args>` to `parallax-cli` and `parallax wallet <args>` to `parallax-wallet`. It has no other functionality — it exists so a single command name covers all roles for users who want it.

Dispatch model

The wrapper is a thin shim:

parallax node --http --datadir ./data   # equivalent to: parallaxd --http --datadir ./data
parallax rpc info                       # equivalent to: parallax-cli info
parallax wallet list                    # equivalent to: parallax-wallet list

Any argument after node, rpc or wallet is forwarded verbatim. You can always invoke parallaxd, parallax-cli or parallax-wallet directly; the wrapper is only a convenience.

One-line examples

Start the full node in daemon mode with HTTP-RPC enabled:

parallaxd --http --datadir ~/.parallax --daemon

Query the running node over JSON-RPC:

parallax-cli info

List the accounts in the keystore, entirely offline:

parallax-wallet list

Use the multi-call wrapper to do the same:

parallax node --http --datadir ~/.parallax --daemon
parallax rpc info
parallax wallet list

Throughout the rest of this documentation, shell snippets use parallaxd for node operations and parallax-cli for RPC queries. Substitute parallax node or parallax rpc if you prefer the wrapper.

​The four binaries

​Dispatch model

​One-line examples

The four binaries

Dispatch model

One-line examples