If you’ve heard of cryptocurrencies or are starting to get interested, then you’ve easily heard of FORK.
What is a Fork?
A Fork is a split into two different “directions” of the software of a cryptocurrency.
The most famous forks were the Bitcoin forks in 2017 and the Ethereum fork, which led to the creation of Ethereum Classic.
Let’s start from basic by explaining the Bitcoin fork.
Bitcoin is made up of its own protocol and blockchain.
Since the protocol has rules written inside that can make its development slow in some parts, some developers may think they can improve their bitcoin by modifying the protocol.
The developers will copy the original BTC protocol and will create the necessary changes to make it work by adding only the improvement developments.
The modified protocol will create a new COIN, which will be incompatible with the BlockChain mined before.
After that it will be decided which block to start the modified protocol from. Some miners will continue to mine with the source protocol, while others will support the modified protocol. This will create two distinct blockchains that are incompatible with each other and consequently an additional coin, separated from this chosen block that will go on independently of each other.
The case we mentioned is called Hard Fork.
It should be noted that there is also a “soft Fork”, which does not create a different blockchain but simply implements important software changes but still compatible with the pre-existing BC.
Users of the coin see the results of a hard fork in their wallets as a new coin is created while there are no evident results for a soft fork since this remains the prerogative of the developers. We users will be unaware.