parallax-wallet - Parallax Technical Documentation

parallax-wallet is the offline wallet management tool for the Parallax client suite. It consolidates the keystore-directory operations previously offered by parallaxd account … and the single-keyfile tool previously shipped as parallaxkey into a single binary, modeled after Bitcoin Core’s bitcoin-wallet. parallax-wallet never talks to a running node. Every command operates directly on files on disk, which makes it safe to run on air-gapped machines for cold-signing workflows. For commands that require a running daemon (newaccount, unlock, sign, sendtx against a live IPC socket), use parallax-cli instead.

Installation

parallax-wallet ships alongside parallaxd and parallax-cli in every release bundle. Building from source:

make parallax-wallet

or, for the whole suite:

make parallax

Subcommands

Keystore-directory operations

These commands operate on the keystore directory at <datadir>/keystore (override with --keystore).

Command	Purpose
`list`	Enumerate accounts in the keystore.
`new`	Create a new, encrypted account.
`update <address>`	Change an account’s password or migrate to the latest keyfile format.
`import <keyfile>`	Import a raw, hex-encoded private key and store it encrypted.
`info`	Print keystore metadata (path, account count, KDF parameters).
`dump`	Serialise the keystore into a single JSON backup (keys stay encrypted).
`createfromdump`	Restore a keystore directory from a `dump` file.

Single-keyfile operations

These commands operate on a single keyfile path — useful when you want a portable, self-contained key outside the keystore.

Command	Purpose
`generate [keyfile]`	Create a new, encrypted standalone keyfile.
`inspect <keyfile>`	Print a keyfile’s public metadata (add `--private` to reveal the private key).
`changepassword <keyfile>`	Re-encrypt a keyfile with a new password.
`signmessage <keyfile> <message>`	Sign an EIP-191 personal message.
`verifymessage <address> <signature> <message>`	Verify a signature against an address.
`signtx <keyfile>`	Build, sign and print a raw transaction offline (submit via `parallax-cli sendraw`).

Passwords

For every command that decrypts a keyfile, parallax-wallet either prompts interactively or reads the password from the file passed with --passwordfile (for keyfile commands) or --password (for keystore-directory commands). The first non-empty line of the file is used as the password.

JSON output

Where applicable, the --json flag switches output to structured JSON.

Examples

Create a new account

parallax-wallet new

Cold-sign a transaction on an air-gapped machine

Given the account’s current nonce (looked up on a live node: parallax-cli getnonce 0x…), the current gas price, and the target chain ID (2110 for mainnet):

parallax-wallet signtx \
  --chainid 2110 --nonce 42 \
  --gas 21000 --gasprice 1000000000 \
  --to 0xabc… --value 0x1 \
  ~/keystore/UTC--...keyfile

Copy the resulting 0x… raw transaction to an internet-connected host and broadcast it with parallax-cli sendraw.

Back up and restore a keystore

parallax-wallet dump --outfile backup.json
parallax-wallet createfromdump --keystore /new/location --infile backup.json

The dump contains every keyfile in its encrypted JSON form — the dump itself is safe to move between machines so long as the account passwords are handled independently.

parallax-cli — talks to a running daemon over IPC (JSON-RPC). Hosts the live newaccount, unlock, sign and sendtx sugar commands, all of which require a node.
clef — long-running external signer daemon with a rule engine and interactive approval UI. Different problem domain from parallax-wallet: it’s a service called by other processes, not a one-shot CLI.

​Installation

​Subcommands

​Keystore-directory operations

​Single-keyfile operations

​Passwords

​JSON output

​Examples

​Create a new account

​Cold-sign a transaction on an air-gapped machine

​Back up and restore a keystore

​Related tools