The first experimental light client was released with 1.7. To try out the light mode, simply run parity --light
.
--light Experimental: run in light client mode. Light clients
synchronize a bare minimum of data and fetch necessary
data on-demand from the network. Much lower in storage,
potentially higher in bandwidth. Has no effect with
subcommands (default: false).
By default, each Parity node serves state data for connected light peers. To disable this, use the --no-serve-light
command-line flag.
--no-serve-light Disable serving of light peers. (default: false)
Read more on the Parity Light Protocol and check the road map on GitHub.