Steemit Crypto Academy | Season 3 Week 4 | Blockchain Forks BY @awesononso

HELLO EVERYONE,
Hope you all are doing well. My name is Syed Huzaifa and today I'll be writing on Blockchain Forks, a homework post assigned by @awesononso.

So before moving on to today's topic, let's discuss some basics.

Well, we all are familiar with the word Blockchain. In this world of blockchain, the most popular cryptocurrency is Bitcoin dominating by 46%. You may have heard of Bitcoin's hard forks, and the most popular among them is BCH (Bitcoin Cash).

For understanding it better I have an example given by the professor itself.

Here is a Hash, Copy it and paste on the given link. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/

000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

You might get confused that why we are having two cryptos of the same block. The answer is due to Forks.

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WHAT IS FORK:

Due to the decentralized nature of a blockchain, the control of any blockchain is not in a single hand. It is controlled by the users and the miners of that blockchain. If the developer has had to make any changes/up-gradation in the blockchain, it will be in the form of a fork. The fork is the change in the protocol of the blockchain.

For understanding it better let's take an example:
Suppose there is an Empire that is controlled by the citizens itself. If there are any changes in that Empire for whatever reason it is and if the 20% of that population is not satisfied so definitely the Empire would be divided into two, and if all the citizens are on one page the Empire will come up with new changes. If you don't understand this example read it twice as it would be the baseline to understand further.

Now coming towards Forks. So there are two types of Forks:

1. Hard Forks
2. Soft Forks

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HARD FORKS:

A hard fork is a type of fork in which the blockchain is split into two parts. The new blockchain will follow the new rule and the old one will be the same. The history of both the blockchain would be the same which can be also seen in a genesis block of that blockchain.

This type of hard fork is also known as Backward-Incompatible because the fork changes the protocol and the new one is incompatible with the old blockchain. This phenomenon gives birth to a whole new currency derive from the old one. This is why the market value of the newly born coin derives from the old is at a good price and the holder of the original coin show interest in investing in it.

https://images.app.goo.gl/5yoQff9QZTRKWDfV9

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BITCOIN HARD FORK:

Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency with a dominance rate of 46% in the market. Through the years bitcoin had been through many up and downs and to prevent it from being hacked many up-gradation has been made, and some which lead it to produce a new blockchain (hard fork of bitcoin), among which the most popular one is Bitcoin Cash BCH.

Bitcoin Cash came into being in the year 2017 and is now known as BCH. As BCH is a new node from the old blockchain it follows new rules and protocols. This currency aimed to increase the block size to increase more transactions.

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SOFT FORK:

Soft Fork is a type of fork in which the original blockchain is improved rather than splitting into parts. It follows the same history as the original blockchain.
The soft fork of a blockchain follows the new rules as well as the old rules too. This type of fork is also called Backward-compatible.

https://images.app.goo.gl/5yoQff9QZTRKWDfV9

A soft fork will be formed when all the miners and holders of the blockchain accept the new up-gradation of the blockchain.

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BITCOIN SOFT FORK:

The soft fork of bitcoin is known as Segregated Witness. Simply put, the size of a bitcoin transaction is reduced increasing the number of transactions per block. In these kinds of soft forks, the new node follows the rule of the original blockchain.

Differences between Hard Forks and Soft Forks

Soft Forks	Hard Forks
A soft fork is the upgrade version of the original blockchain	Hard fork results in a new currency after splitting from the old one.
Soft copy of a blockchain follows the old as well as new rules	Hard copy follows a completely new rule from the old one.
An example for soft forks is Segregated Witness	Example for hard forks is Bitcoin Cash BCH
New block follows the same rule	New block follow the new rule

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EXPLAINING THE FOLLOWING BITCOIN FORKS:

Bitcoin Cash
Segregated Witnesses

BITCOIN CASH:

Starting from the basics, Bitcoin Cash is a fork of Bitcoin. It was initially launched in 2017. After a year, in 2018 it further split into two other cryptocurrencies that are Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV.

If you have a look at the hash of BCH and Bitcoin, both the hash is the same. So as they share the same hash BCH is the Soft Fork of BItcoin.

Segregated Witnesses:

Starting with the problem, there was a challenge faced by the bitcoin platform. One of the problems faced by the platform in its early days was with the increasing number of BTC holders, the transactions were also increasing day by day. Due to the increment in the transaction, more blocks were added to the blockchain which exceeds the maximum limit from one Megabyte. Due to the heavyweight of the transaction, a delay was seen in the transaction which rises to more than hours. This problem should be resolve to make the system sustainable. For this purpose, some changes in the blockchain were being made. To resolve this problem Dr. Pieter Wuille suggested making a digital signature. From the transaction, the digital signature was segregated. They named this process ** Segregated Witnesses**.

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STEEM HARD FORK:

While reading this post, you should know about this platform ** (Steam) ** but you might don't know that Steem had also experienced a hard fork that is known as Hive Blog.

When the combination of TRX was out, many of the users didn't like the idea which leads to a new blockchain known as HIVE BLOG. It's very similar to Steemit.

Here is the interface of the Hive blog.

You can visit the site using this link: https://hive.blog/

Hive blog is a social platform where you can earn by writing about your daily life or on a particular topic just like Steemit.

Hive blog is very similar to Steemit, here's an interface of the Steemit platform:

Now let's have a look at Block Explorers. Let's begin with Steem.

Have an eye on the mining date and time.

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Now let's check out Hive Block, here's a link for it https://hiveblocks.com/

Now, search for block 1 in the genesis block:

You'll encounter this kind of interface. Here is the genesis block 1 for the Hive blog. If you notice the mining date of the hive blog is the same as of Steem.

For more information click** "Show raw virtual op data"**.

If you look closely you will notice that the miner is the same for Steem and Hive Blog both.

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CONCLUSION:

So starting from the beginning, we learn a lot much through the homework post assigned by professor @awesononso.

In this week we learn about Blockchain Forks and their types.

So linking from the first example of an Empire. An empire is any blockchain. The people of that empire is the miners and holder of that blockchain ( for E.g BTC).

If an order is given by the authorities of that empire, and if all the citizens agree with that agreement, a new rule will be formed in that empire and if a group of people denied obeying the order they will form a separate Empire which would originate from the original one.

I hope that this example made it much easier for you guys to understand it.

That is all from my side, hope you enjoyed reading the post. Take care and Goodbye :)

Special Mention to:
@awesononso

#awesononso-s3week4 #cryptoacademy #steemit #forks #steemexclusive #steemit