Steemit Cryptoacademy Season 3 week 4 || Blockchain Forks || Homework Post submitted to @awesononso

Its another great week in the Crypto Academy and am delighted to be your Student sir @awesononso

The topic is on Forks, Hard and Soft forks, Let’s get to the task questions.

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What is a Fork?

Cryptocurrency is never complete without mentioning the word Fork. A fork usually comes to mind when the developer feels something has to change about the project or cryptocurrency. It is usually to enhance the functionality of the project. A fork also comes with a sharp fall in price of the cryptocurrency and in turn affect the holders of such cryptocurrencies.

A fork is a change in the blockchain guidelines in which the software uses to validate its authenticity of a transaction. This changes usually comes with a changes in contract address and other few informations concerning the cryptocurrency. A blockchain fork can either be SOFT OR HARD. Now let's see what they are;

Explain in details what a Hard Fork

Many time in the cryptocurrency ecosystem there arise a swift upgrade in a network that can render all other transactions valid or invalid, which requires a validator to upgrade to a new and better network. It involves a split in the blockchain protocol. This change in protocol that makes this transactions valid or not is termed Hard fork. In its real sense a hard fork leads to a permanent separation in a network chain making the older version not compatible with the new. Hard forks are often considered to be dangerous and prone to attack as a split will also affect even the miners who help to validate transactions.

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An example of a hard fork can be seen in Etherum London hard fork that should take place on the 4th of August 2021. This hard fork according to them is a protocol update that will solve two distinct problems; one (ElP 1559) is the fee structure in the Etherum network by burning part of the fees and other revenues and the other (EIP 3554) will increase the mining difficulties in the Etherum network as it moves from the previous Proof of Work (POW) to Proof of stake (POS). This hard fork is said to happen in London. source

Apart from bitcoin cash which was a hard fork of Bitcoin there are other hard forks such as the Bitcoin classic, as we agreed earlier that the community to a large extent determines a hard fork. Bitcoin classic hard fork was initiated by the community because they wanted a larger block size than the Biction XT, In 2016 bitcoin classic was introduced and with another increment of block size to 2 megabites. Bitcoin classic is still being supported today as many community members believes in the project.

Explain in details what a Soft Fork

The Soft refer to a forward compatible change in the blockchain protocol though the new blockchain will continue to recieve blocks from the newly upfraded blockchain protocol unlike hard fork where everything is changed and the old cannot recieve from the new blockchain. In a soft fork the rules of the blockchain are not changed but modified to interact with the old blockchain's making it possible to accept both old and new transactions.

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An excellent example of this is the Segregated Witness bitcoin protocol which was updated in 2015. Prior to this time transactions on bitcoin protocol was way too expensive and time consuming, there it is imperative that an upgrade was required. The SegWit protocol proposed a solution by presenting an upgrade from 1MB which was already existing to 4MB to free more block space. Eventually, the soft fork was completed and bitcoin was able to recieve 4MB and 1MB blocks all together at the same time.

What are the differences between Hard Forks and Soft Forks?

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Usually cryptocurrency communities determine what kind of fork should be carried out on a block, however each forks has its advantages and disadvantages as well as strength and weaknesses, there can be observed some very important and key differences between Hard and Soft forks;
It is possible for a soft fork to voilate blockchain rules and regulations by doing so, full nodes users and miners can be tricked into validating transactions which do not follow the blockchain guidelines. The hard fork on the other hand involves a total change of a protocol.

During a soft fork the community will not be affected since its just an upgrade of a protocol, but in hard fork, communities are bound to split into two with each going sideways, an example can be seen with steemit and Hive.
Soft forks posses less risk to the blockchain than the hard fork as the hashing power is splitted into two which will make the protocol more vulnerable to attack.
Above all we can say that both forks have their own uses when explored properly.

Hard fork	Soft fork
New rules are created	Old rules can be followed
nodes cannot follow old rules	it is possible for nodes to accept old rules
Its backward compatible	its forward compatible
it is more convenient for developers	convenient for users
requires software installation	not installation is required

5.Explain the following Bitcoin Forks and explore the blockchain where necessary

Bitcoin cash
The bitcoin cash was as a result of the Bitcoin hard fork which occurred in August 2017. The demand came as a result of the demand in the block size, it was therefore created to accept a larger block size than the previous. Bitcoin cash and bitcoin though have same similarities in certain areas such as market cap and other but then they operate on different blockchain guidelines. A fork is intended to solve a problem, therefore Bitcoin cash help solve the problem of scalability and high transaction fees by increasing the block size to between 8 and 32 MB respectively. Conclusively, Bitcoin cash is a Hard fork of Bitcoin. In the screenshot from block explorer, two block are seen: Bitcoin (Previous) and Bitcoin cash (New), both having different rules to work with.

Segregated Witness

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The Segregated Witness (SegWit) was birth when the bitcoin community need a larger block size, the previous became very slow and expensive to work with, there an upgrade of 4MB from the previous 1MB was introdued. This wasnt to change the protocol but to make it better and cheaper for the community usage. This was a not a total change of protocol and can be called a SOFT FORK. The previous protocol could accept transactions from the new protocol as well its Blockchain guidelines.

Steemit and Hive hard fork

A fork cannot occur except the community agree. This is a case with the case with Steemit as the hard fork wasn't planned but alll the same it happened. Tron was about taking or buying over Steemit and some of the community members opposed the purchase. Around May 2020, steem initiated a hard fork and account of all those who opposed the acquisition amounting to about 64 million USD was seized, this brought about lots of arguments and some of Steemit witnesses and validator as well as stake holders created what is called Hive today.

My steemit display page

my Hive display page

The Hard fork therefore resulted in a split, a new block and created with its own guidelines though Steemit and Hive looks very much alike. This also resulted in serious losses which forced the market price of steem to fall considerably as the system became weak and prone to attack, but I think they are good now.

Steem explorer

Hive explorer

Comparing steem and hive block explorer, we can see great similarities in both, same interface apart from the color, every other thing is the same.

Conclusion
I t can be concluded that regardless of what ever fork, blockchain forks are essential in ensuring a smooth running of the blockchain. There will always be need for soft and hardware upgrades hence the need for forks.

THANK YOU