Crypto Academy/season 3 /week 4- Home work post for @awesononso /blockchain forks by @ruthjoe

Hello steemians

am excited to be a part of week 4 cryptoacademy course season 3. Indeed it has been good. At first when i saw the tittle of the course given by @awesononso i was speechless for a while but then after reading the lectures i understood while the tittle was given. Thank you @awesononso for the lectures and am here to answer the questions given as homework after the lectures.

Source

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QUESTION 1: WHAT IS A FORK( in your own words)

Usually we have some apps on our mobile phones that we make use of from time and time. Sometimes we get notification that we should upgrade the app for the sake of efficiency such as speed or fastness. If you chose to click on the upgrade, the app in particular upgrades and you automatically begin to enjoy all its goodies that comes from the upgrade. But if you chose not to upgrade, you will be using the old version of the app. Some changes were made on the app which is called upgrade that is why you were notified.

Likewise in blockchain, a fork happens when there is division or changes in the network or protocol of a blockchain.

A fork usually happens when the user or miners are no longer comfortable with some features, or when they feel the network is not satisfying some of their needs, or a fork can happen in other to better the network of the blockchain.

A fork is another means of coming up with a new cryptocurrency. Examples of cryptocurrency from fork are bitcoin cash (BCH), hive, etc

TYPES OF FORK IN BLOCKCHAIN
There are two types of fork that exist in the blockchain which includes:

• Hard fork
• Soft fork

REASONS WHY FORK TAKES PLACES
A fork may occur for 3 reasons ;

• Upgrade
• Protection from hacking
• Dissatisfaction and disagreement of miners or users

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QUESTION 2: EXPLAIN IN DETAILS WHAT HARD FORK IS WITH EXAMPLES(can be of any blockchain)

A hard fork is a break out. A hard fork takes place when the users or miners of a blockchain network are no longer comfortable or satisfied with either the rules or the features of the blockchain, and wants to implement some changes but there is no agreement in the system to the said change, therefore some miners break out from the existing blockchain to create theirs.

Hard fork causes a division in a blockchain. The blockchain divides into two, those in support of the hardfork goes with it to the new blockchain while those who are not in support, stay back with the already existing blockchain.

In terms of rules, there is no relationship between the existing blockchain network and the new blockchain network, because there is a total change in the protocols of the new blockchain network created. This means that miners or users who didnt move into the new created blockchain network can not receive blocks from the old or existing blockchain, therefore they are cut off.

Hard fork produces a new cryptocurrency different from the existing one.

EXAMPLES OF HARDFORK

• Ethereum hard fork of 2016
  In the 2016 Ethereum blockchain experienced a hard fork. The hard fork happened when the blockchain was hacked because it was vunerable and lots of funds was taken out by the hacker, So in other to recover the funds and secure the blockchain, the hard fork was used as a rescue mission. This lead to a breakout or division in the Ethereum blockchain. One group went with the hard fork while the existing blockchain became the Ethereum classic.

• Steem blockchain hard fork of 2020
  Our steem blockchain also experienced a hardfork in 2020. Steem blockchain was hard forked and it divided into two. This hard fork happened after Justin Sun proposed the integration of tron to steem blockchain. There was no agreement with this proposal, so a hard fork took place which resulted to another new blockchain called the Hive. And also a new cryptocurrency emerged from there known as hive.

• Bitcoin was hard forked to produce the bitcoin cash(BCH)
  Bitcoin cash is a cryptocurrency which is a fork of bitcoin. Users wanted some changes in the rules or protocols but there was no collective agreement, it then lead to a hardfork.

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QUESTION 3: EXPLAIN IN DETAILS WHAT A SOFT FORK IS WITH EXAMPLES( can be of any blockchain)

A soft fork takes place when there is modification or change in protocol in the version of blockchain network.

Although a new version of network is created, there is still a relationship between the previous and the new version. Therefore the old or existing blockchain can still receive blocks from the new blockchain network.

Although, the functions and rules of the new blockchain may differ from the old blockchain. In this case, users are advised to move into the new blockchain network in other to enjoy the goodies of the new blockchain.

For a soft fork ,the two networks on the blockchain can still be maintained and kept running.

EXAMPLE OF A SOFT FORK

• Segregated witness
  The segregated witness is an example of a soft fork. It didnt result to the formation of new cryptocurrency neither did it spilt the network.

segregated witness took place after the hardfork of bitcoin into bitcoin cash. So segregated witness took place to in other to update the blockchain with the new changes that has been made, and correct some protocols.

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QUESTION 4: WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HARD FORK AND SOFT FORK.
The difference between a hard fork and a soft fork includes the following:

HARD FORK	SOFT FORK
A division in the blockchain	no division occurs
The height of a blockchain is often repeated	no repeatition of block height takes place
A new cryptocurrency is formed	no new cryptocurrency is formed
Takes place due to disagreement	no diagreement takes place
Users are cut off from the original blockchain	users are not cutoff from the blockchain

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QUESTION 5: EXPLAIN THE FOLLOWING BITCOIN FORKS AND EXPLORE THE BLOCHCHAIN WHERE NECESSARY. INDICATE IF THEY ARE HARD FORK OR SOFT FORK.
Bitcoin cash
Segregated witnesses

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• BITCOIN CASH
  Bitcoin cash is a currency that resulted from a hard fork of bitcoin.

The miners or users of bitcoin blockchain network were no longer satisfied with some protocols of the blockchain, so they wanted to effect changes in those areas where they were not satisfied example of such area of disatisfaction was that some miners wanted the size of the blockchain to be increased from its normal size, while some didnt agree to this.
As they could not reach an agreement, there was a split which resulted to the Bitcoin cash.

Some users who agreed to the changes to be made went with bitcoin cash while some some didnt agree to the adjustmeng stayed with bitcoin.

CHANGES EFFECTED TO BITCOIN CASH

• The speed of transfer : Bitcoin cash was made to have a faster rate of transfering funds which was different from what is seen in the bitcoin blockchain network. The bitcoin cash uses less than 10mins to fund tranfer.

• Transaction loads : Bitcoin cash blockchain takes up more transaction in less seconds. Unlike what was seen in the Bitcoin blockchain.

• Transfer fees : The fees charged during transfer or when transaction takes place in a bitcoin cash is less or cheaper.

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EXPLORING THE BITCOIN CASH
To explore the bitcoin cash i took the following steps.
Step 1:
I copied the hash given by prof @awesononso which is this 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

Step 2 i clicked no the link also given by the prof
https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/
It then opens up, so on the search space i pasted the hash i copied, and clicked on search as seen in the screenshot below

Step 3: it opened up the block chain explorer showing me two blocks the bitcoin block and the bitcoin cash block.

Step 4: I clicked on the bitcoin cash

• SEGREGATED WITNESS
  Segregated witness is a soft fork of a bitcoin blockchain.

Segregated witness as a soft fork took place after the division of bitcoin cash from bitcoin.

Segregated witness was introduced by a man called Pieter Wuille during a conference that took place in 2015, he introduced segregated witness as a corrective measure the protocol of bitcoin. His proposal was finally considered and was put to use in 2017.

The word segregate means seperate while the word witness means to be present when an event took place. As the name implies, segregation witness is used to correct a transaction malleability. What does it mean? segregated witness stores data in a seperate place different from the blockchain storage. This enables data ID to be seen and retrieved. So malleability here simply means the illegal change of transaction ID's. With segregation witness illegal change of transaction ID is prevented.

Segregation witness is also used to increase the normal scalability of blockchain network, making available more chance so that more transactions can be done.

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QUESTION 6: WRITE ON STEEM AND HIVE HARD FORK AND SHOW SIMILARITIES IN THEIR GENESIS BLOCK CHAIN

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STEEM AND HIVE HARDFORK

Steem with a social media blockchain platform is called steemit, was started in the year 2016 but it experienced a hard fork in 2020 and that hard fork resulted in the breakout or division of its users or miners.

The division took place as a result of the disagreement that was experience when the founder of of steem announced the integration of TRON to steemit platform.

Some miners disagreed with him and decided to go their own way which lead to the creation of another blockchain called the Hive blog and also a new cryptocurrency immerged which was called hive.

Onlike on steemit platform where users earn tron as one of their rewards, on hive their is nothing like that.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN STEEM BLOCK AND HIVE BLOCK

To get into steem block i typed
https://steemworld.org on my browser

For hive block

So you will notice that from the screenshots above there is similarities in their genesis block of both the steem and hive. Such similarities includes ;

• Both the steem and hive have the same mining date and time.

• The name of the miners for both steem and hive are the same.

• They both have the same number of vest.

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CONCLUSION
Its been an amazing time learning about blockchain forks.

Blockchain fork creates new opportunities to explore more, it all depends on what kind of fork the system wants to undergo, either a soft fork or a hard fork.

Because changes are inivitable that is another reason why forks happen.

Thank you for reading