Command-line options - Parallax Technical Documentation

Parallax ships four binaries, mirroring Bitcoin Core’s bitcoind / bitcoin-cli / bitcoin-wallet / bitcoin layout:

parallaxd — the full-node daemon. Runs the node, serves JSON-RPC over HTTP/WS/IPC, and hosts the account/chain/db/console subcommands used to bootstrap and maintain the node.
parallax-cli — the JSON-RPC client. Talks to a running parallaxd over its IPC socket (or --rpc http://…) and exposes a small set of ergonomic sugar commands (info, peers, balance, sendraw, …).
parallax-wallet — the offline wallet tool. Operates directly on keystore files on disk, never talks to a running node, and is covered in full on the parallax-wallet page.
parallax — a thin multi-call wrapper. parallax node <args> dispatches to parallaxd; parallax rpc <args> dispatches to parallax-cli; parallax wallet <args> dispatches to parallax-wallet.

The full, authoritative command list for each binary is emitted by the binary itself:

parallaxd --help
parallax-cli --help
parallax-wallet --help
parallax help

The rest of this page is a quick reference to help you decide which binary a given task belongs to.

`parallaxd` — daemon subcommands

Run under parallaxd <subcommand> (or parallax node <subcommand>). These commands operate on local on-disk state (the datadir, keystore, chaindata) and generally do not require a running daemon.

Category	Commands
Blockchain	`init`, `import`, `export`, `import-preimages`, `export-preimages`, `dump`, `dumpgenesis`
Accounts	`account` (list/new/update/import subcommands)
Database	`db`, `removedb`, `snapshot`
Console	`attach`, `console`, `js`
XHash	`makecache`, `makedag`
Misc	`dumpconfig`, `license`, `version`, `version-check`

Invoking parallaxd with no subcommand runs the node itself (the default action).

`parallax-cli` — RPC sugar subcommands

Run under parallax-cli <subcommand> (or parallax rpc <subcommand>). Each of these issues a JSON-RPC call against a running parallaxd, auto-discovering the IPC socket at <datadir>/parallax.ipc unless --rpc is given.

Category	Commands
Lifecycle	`start`, `stop`, `info`, `uptime`, `loglevel`, `trace`
Chain	`chaininfo`, `blockcount`, `syncing`, `tip`, `getblock`, `getblockhash`, `getheader`, `gettx`, `getreceipt`
Network	`netinfo`, `peers`, `addpeer`, `removepeer`, `addtrusted`, `removetrusted`, `addnode`, `removenode`, `addrbook-status`, `addrbook-resetkey`, `dialv2`, `setban`, `listbanned`, `clearbanned`
Mempool	`mempool`, `mempool-content`, `sendraw`
Accounts	`listaccounts`, `newaccount`, `balance`, `nonce`, `code`, `storage`, `unlock`, `lock`, `sign`, `sendtx`
Gas	`gasprice`, `estimategas`
Mining	`mining`, `startmining`, `stopmining`, `setcoinbase`, `setextra`
Utilities	`decoderaw`, `toaddr`, `dbstats`

Output conventions match bitcoin-cli: object responses are pretty-printed JSON (2-space indent, HTML escaping disabled), scalar responses are bare values followed by a newline (so $(parallax-cli blockcount) is directly pipeable in shell scripts), and mutating commands print nothing on success. The global flag set for parallax-cli is intentionally tiny:

Flag	Purpose
`--datadir <path>`	Where to look for the IPC socket when `--rpc` is unset. Defaults to the platform’s standard Parallax datadir.
`--testnet`	Resolve paths relative to `<datadir>/testnet/` instead of `<datadir>/`.
`--rpc <url>`	Override the endpoint. Accepts an IPC path or `http://`, `ws://` URL.

`parallax-wallet` — offline wallet subcommands

Run under parallax-wallet <subcommand> (or parallax wallet <subcommand>). Every command operates directly on files on disk — no running daemon is required or contacted — which makes the binary suitable for air-gapped, cold-signing workflows.

Category	Commands
Keystore directory	`list`, `new`, `update`, `import`, `info`, `dump`, `createfromdump`
Single keyfile	`generate`, `inspect`, `changepassword`, `signmessage`, `verifymessage`, `signtx`

See the parallax-wallet page for flags, password handling and worked examples.

`parallax` — wrapper

parallax node   [args...]   run the parallaxd full-node daemon
parallax rpc    [args...]   send an RPC via parallax-cli
parallax wallet [args...]   run an offline wallet command via parallax-wallet
parallax help               show wrapper help
parallax version            print version information

The wrapper forwards every argument after node, rpc or wallet verbatim to the companion binary. On Unix it replaces itself with the target via syscall.Exec, so the companion’s process signals, exit codes, and terminal attachment behave exactly as if it had been invoked directly.

​parallaxd — daemon subcommands

​parallax-cli — RPC sugar subcommands

​parallax-wallet — offline wallet subcommands

​parallax — wrapper

`parallaxd` — daemon subcommands

`parallax-cli` — RPC sugar subcommands

`parallax-wallet` — offline wallet subcommands

`parallax` — wrapper