When you run $CONFD_DIR/bin/confd which is a shell script that 'exec’s $CONFD_DIR/lib/confd/erts/bin/confdexec, which does a pipe + fork, and in the child process exec()s $CONFD_DIR/lib/confd/erts/bin/confd.smp, which is the actual ConfD daemon, i.e. Erlang VM.
If you go through the $CONFD_DIR/bin/confd shell script, you will see how confdexec is being used to start the confd daemon.