Parallax Core

Reference Golang implementation of the Parallax protocol.

Parallax is a Proof-of-Work timechain protocol designed to merge the security model of Bitcoin with the programmability of the EVM. It combines Bitcoin’s fixed monetary rules with Ethereum’s virtual machine to deliver a scarce, decentralized, and programmable timechain.

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More on Parallax

• Website: https://parallaxprotocol.org
• The Parallax Doctrine: https://github.com/ParallaxProtocol/parallax-doctrine
• Beginner Guides: https://docs.parallaxprotocol.org/guides
• Technical Documentation: https://docs.parallaxprotocol.org
• Whitepaper: https://parallaxprotocol.org/introduction/whitepaper

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Building from Source

Parallax requires Go 1.25+ and a C compiler.

make prlx

Build the full suite:

make all

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Executables

Binaries are located under build/bin:

Command	Description
prlx	Main CLI client. Runs full, archive, or light nodes; exposes JSON-RPC over HTTP, WS, and IPC.
prlx-gui	Desktop application that embeds a full Parallax node and exposes it through a friendly UI. See Parallax Desktop below.
clef	Stand-alone signer for secure account operations.
devp2p	Networking utilities to inspect and interact at the P2P layer.
abigen	Generates type-safe Go bindings from contract ABIs.
bootnode	Lightweight discovery node to bootstrap networks.
pvm	Execute and debug PVM bytecode snippets in isolation.
rlpdump	Decode RLP structures into a human-readable form.

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Running a Node

Interactive console:

./prlx console

Hardware Recommendations

• Minimum: 2 cores, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD, 8 Mbps
• Recommended: 4+ cores, 8 GB RAM, 500 TB SSD, 25+ Mbps

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Parallax Desktop

prlx-gui is a cross-platform desktop application that runs a Parallax full node from a friendly UI. The same prl.Parallax service that powers the CLI is embedded in-process — there's no separate sidecar — so a single binary is everything an end user needs to join the network.

Highlights

• One-click node lifecycle, sync progress, peer count, disk usage, and uptime on a live dashboard.
• Live tail of recent blocks and transactions.
• Drill-down peers screen with inbound/outbound classification, capabilities, and per-protocol metadata.
• HTTP-RPC enabled by default on 127.0.0.1 so MetaMask and any other EVM-compatible wallet can connect to the user's own node — including a one-click "Add to MetaMask" flow served by an embedded helper page.
• Live log tail with verbosity control and a Pause/Resume button, accessible from the Settings page.
• First-run wizard for picking a data directory, sync mode, inbound NAT policy, and confirming the local-RPC opt-in.

Building locally

The GUI is built with Wails v2. One-time prerequisites:

go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest

# Linux only
sudo pacman -S --needed gtk3 webkit2gtk-4.1 pkgconf       # Arch
sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev pkg-config  # Debian/Ubuntu

Then from the repository root:

make prlx-gui                  # build for the host platform
./cmd/prlx-gui/build/bin/prlx-gui

Pre-built binaries

Tagged releases on GitHub include zipped GUI builds for linux/amd64, linux/arm64, darwin/amd64, darwin/arm64, and windows/amd64, produced natively per platform by the release workflow in .github/workflows/release.yml.

For the full architecture, security model, and the list of fields the desktop app exposes, see cmd/prlx-gui/README.md.

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Contribution

We welcome contributions aligned with neutrality, openness, and decentralization.

1. Fork the repo
2. Implement your changes
3. Open a PR against main

Guidelines

• Format with gofmt; document public symbols following Go conventions.
• Keep commits focused; prefix messages with affected packages (e.g., prlx, rpc:).

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License

• Library code (/ excluding cmd/): LGPL v3
• Executables (/cmd/*): GPL v3

Attribution Notice

Parallax Core is a derivative work of go-ethereum originally developed by the go-ethereum authors and licensed under the GNU LGPL-3.0.