What is Bitcoin Forks?

In any decentralized network, when a update of the protocol is needing, the network devs and contributors decide on how and when to do those changes.

A fork happens when an existing blockchain, it branches into two blockchains different. This happening when a update is being made at the network level and it not getting accepted and adopted by all the nodes.

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Types of Bitcoin Forks

Soft fork — it is an update being made at the protocol level, without causing a branch. Both kinds of nodes, new and old, they can read both versions of the blockchain (they compatible). Just one of the blockchains stays good.

Hard fork — old nodes can't read the new blockchain, and the other way round, new nodes they can read the old blockchain (versions not fitting together). That making two separate, blockchains that have own tokens/money.

Anytime an update is happening at the protocol level, nodes they must decide if they go up to the new changes, or they don't. If they don't want the changes, then the result is a hard fork.

Forks in Bitcoin History

All through its history, Bitcoin it got both soft forks and hard forks.

Example of soft fork is Segwit, that happening in August 2017. It letting the Bitcoin blockchain get bigger by adding more transactions to the 1MB space it has.

Another is Taproot, it will happen in November 2021. This change making Bitcoin more secret and safe.

Most important hard fork of Bitcoin was in August 2017, when Bitcoin Cash it came. Back then, very heated talk in the Bitcoin gang about size of blocks. People behind Bitcoin cash they said, "Make block bigger from 1MB to 8MB." People sticking with how things were saying, "Stay at 1MB so more nodes can join and keep the network from one big group."

Finally, forks they part of the place, showing a community always finding new ways and mixing things up.