Cryptocurrency Fork, What It Really Means #001

jueco (76)modquality controllerin Steem Alliance • 10 months ago

Hello great minds,

It is a wonderful opportunity to come before you all today to discuss on an issue of great importance in the cryptospace.

I trust you are doing perfectly fine and are enjoying your activities in the community today as we promote steemit across various social media platform.

Today, we shall discuss about a new topic in the cryptospace and I am sure you all will enjoy this interesting topic.

Today, we shall be learning about cryptocurrency fork and we shall be learning about it in details.

CRYPTOCURRENCY FORK

Some of us might be familiar with the concept of cryptocurrency fork, while to others it is a new word.

Nonetheless, we will understand fully what cryptocurrency fork is about.

Cryptocurrency fork can be explained to be a significant change in the rules or protocols governing a blockchain, and as a result of this, there is usually a divergence in the history of the blockchain transaction.

There are various reasons that may cause this process to be initiated, reasons such as resolving dispute, upgrading the network or addressing security vulnerabilities.

There are two types of fork in cryptocurrency, there are: soft fork and hard fork and we will learn about them in this discussion.

SOFT FORK

A cryptocurrency soft fork can be explained to be a backward compatible update or a deviation in the software protocol of a blockchain.

A softfork unlike an hardfork does not result in permanent divergence of the blockchain, rather it allows nodes that have not upgraded to still accept and very blocks and transactions.

Explained below are more explanation of soft fork

Source

BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY:

Backward compatibility is one of the interesting features of a soft fork, and this implies that nodes that have not yet upgraded to a new software can still be a participant of the network without disruption.

There is still a maintenance of the existing rules of the soft fork and changes which are within the scope of these rules are made.

PROTOCOL CHANGES:

Cryptocurrency soft fork is associated with changes to the consensus protocols and rules of the blockchain.

This often includes changes to the ways in which news blocks are added to the blockchain or how transactions are validated.

CONSENSUS MECHANISM:

In a blockchain network, Inorder for the state of the ledger to be agreed upon, the nodes has to follow a particular consensus mechanism.

Changes in this consensus mechanism are often implemented by softfork while confirming that old nodes can still interact with the blockchain network.

MINER AND NODE CONSENSUS:

A consensus is required by softfork among network participants, most especially miners and node operators.

An agreement needs to be met by the miners to enforce the new rules and transactions need to be validated by nodes according to their updated protocol.