Contest alert//Forks

Greetings everyone hope you are all doing great I'm glad to participate in this contest that @khursheedanwar organized.

Designed from canva

What are forks and when they occurs?

The term ‘Fork, in the blockchain technology is understood as a bifurcation of the blockchain that originates two or more paths leading to the development of two different blockchain systems. Forks can occur in two main forms: the specific types of the upgrade which are the hard forks and the soft forks.

Hard forks arise when there is a change in the rules of a blockchain and results in the creation of a new blockchain forever. And this often leads to the formation of a new piece of money, more preferably a coin. Soft forks on the other hand are improvements of the blockchain protocol where nodes that are on the new version can still communicate with nodes that have not updated to this new version.

Forks happen for several reasons including; new protocol releases, community disputes, or mostly because of a security issue. They can provoke controversies and discussions in the community, but that is the only way to develop the blockchain tech and make it better.

Distinguish between fork types?

In the context of technology and software development forks can mean somewhat different things and each of them is unique in some ways. Two major forms under which forks are conducted are; Hard forks and Soft forks.

Designed from canva

Said, hard fork takes place in the situation where a new change has been made in the blockchain protocol which makes the new change incompatible with the existing one it creates a permanent split. In other words, nodes that are running the older software will not be able to validate new transactions hence resulting to a creation of a new network. Such examples of the hard fork include Bitcoin Cash derived from Bitcoin and Ethereum Classic from Ethereum.

On the other hand soft forks are changes in the protocol of the blockchain are compatible with the previous versions of the software hence nodes executing the older application are still capable of validating transaction information. Soft forks are used to stiff the protocol to make certain blocks that were previously valid, invalid. This may cause a split in the network with the nodes running old and new protocol until majority of them switch to the new protocol. An example of a soft fork is the implementation of Segregated Witness which is abbreviated as SegWit for Bitcoin.

Therefore, this describes that hard forks create a new and distinct branch of the blockchain, in contrast to soft forks that are sometimes called soft protocols since they do not disrupt forward or backward continuity of the chain. Sensationally, both are integral procedures for shaping the further and determining the present state of the blockchain process and its governance.

Thanks for reading my post I'm inviting @rad-austine ,@ability20 and @emmy01 to participate in this contest.