What Are Bitcoin Forks?
The word “fork” is somewhat confusing because there are different kinds of “forks” that can mean very different things.Codebase ForkA codebase fork is a copy of the code of a software implementation. A codebase fork typically makes tweaks to the original codebase. In the context of Bitcoin, codebase forks can be entirely compatible with the Bitcoin protocol, they can cause a blockchain fork or they can establish a whole new cryptocurrency.Blockchain ForkA blockchain fork happens when a blockchain branches into two versions of transaction history. This can happen for a number of reasons,....
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Bitcoin Core, an “open source software project that is a direct descendant of the original Bitcoin implementation”, released a statement late last week on its website. The main focus was how Bitcoin consensus rules were changed, which is typically through soft forks and hard forks. Hard forks and soft forks do virtually the same thing, so Bitcoin Core argues that soft forks are to be preferred as they do not cause the amount of harm on the Bitcoin network as a hard fork can potentially do since users can choose to upgrade to new features when they want to, or remain or the current Bitcoin....
Hard forks are a rather contentious issue in Bitcoin. The controversy surrounding hard forks can be seen most prominently in the context of Bitcoin XT 's implementation of BIP 101. While there have been successful Bitcoin hard forks in the past, the problem with hard forks of the Bitcoin blockchain is that they're, well, hard. Any change to the Bitcoin protocol that requires a hard fork essentially requires near-complete consensus to avoid a potential blockchain split. For example, there are many individuals in the Bitcoin development community who do not believe that BIP 101's use of a 75....
Since the summer of 2017, more than 44 forks of the Bitcoin network were created and so far many of them have lost considerable value and are near worthless. To-date only a few of the forks that stem from Satoshi’s creation have remained relevant during the last three years. There are three branches of Satoshi Nakamoto’s codebase that have commanded top positions within the top fifteen coins in the crypto coin market economy. Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Bitcoinsv (BSV) have all been top contenders for quite some time. Between the price, onchain activities, and....
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has summarized the implications of soft and hard forks amid growing tensions surrounding Bitcoin’s future. “...There is an essential difference between hard forks and soft forks: hard forks are opt-in, whereas soft forks allow users no “opting” at all,” he wrote earlier this week. The Bitcoin price was under downward pressure Friday as the community awaits Chinese regulatory announcements and indecisiveness over SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited continues. After Unlimited succumbed to a bug earlier in the week, rhetoric between the opposing sides became even....
Data shows the Ethereum Proof-of-Work forks have sharply fallen down in the few days following the merge. Ethereum PoW Forks Have Fallen 66% In Just Five Days According to the latest weekly report from Arcane Research, the ETH PoW forks have performed very poorly against ETH since the merge. The much talked-about event transitioned Ethereum to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, essentially obfuscating the use of miners on the network. However, some communities that were in favor of the old PoW-based system decided to create forks as the merge came approaching. These new forks still rely....