Hello Everyone.
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Welcome to my post, I really want to use this medium to thank our able teacher @fredquantum for all he has been doing for all of us, you have laid impacts on the life of many including mine and we are grateful.
No doubt a newbie with no idea about the Cryptocurrency ecosystem will think the fork here is that kitchen utensil we use to devour our meals, I thought so as well not until I read through the article and I could not help but laugh at myself.
Forks in the Cryptocurrency ecosystem can give rise to a new blockchain and sometimes it just updates the already existing blockchain.
Forks in the Cryptocurrency ecosystem are said to occur when changes are added to an existing blockchain, in other words fork occurs on a blockchain when there is an upgrade or an update to enable the blockchain serve it's users better. In some cases forking a blockchain gives rise to another chain, this new chain shares the same Genesis with the obsolete chain.
In some cases no new chain is formed and the blockchain continues in it original state.
There are two types of fork in the Cryptocurrency ecosystem and these includes all of the following:
- Hard Fork.
- Soft Fork.
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This is a type of fork in the Cryptocurrency ecosystem which gives rise to a new blockchain, once a blockchain is hard forked a new blockchain is formed and transaction validation agreeing to the obsolete/old chain considers the blocks formed by the new chain as fake/untrue, **Hard Forks are backwards-incompatible.
The new chain formed and the already existing blockchain will share the same history, that is to say they share the same Genesis block. Blockchains like the Bitcoin blockchain, Ethereum and the steem blockchain have all undergone a hard fork which gave birth to a blockchain.
On the other hand, soft forks are changes or upgrade that occurs on a blockchain and these changes do not give rise to a new blockchain therefore both old and new nodes still share data. Soft Forks are backward compatible as not all the users are expected to upgrade to the new nodes, users who did not upgrade to the new nodes will still have the right to participate in the validation of transactions.
Soft Forks are easier to apply as only majority of users are expected to upgrade to the new nodes.
What necessitates forks in cryptocurrency?
A lot of things leads to the forking of a blockchain and these includes all of the following:
A disagreement between miners and developers can lead to the forking of a blockchain.
An upgrade to enable to blockchain serve its users better and more efficiently.
In Conclusion, forking of a blockchain sometimes becomes very necessary in order to settle dispute between miners and developers, it also enables the blockchain to serve its users more efficiently.
Thanks for reading my post.