Why Blockchain Networks Have to Fork or Split?
Most popularly, blockchain has been used for cryptocurrencies for which it was originally created. Blockchain is there to confirm the transactions done by the miners without the intervention of any centralised authority. But as there are several complexities with everything, with Blockchain also there is often a conflict of decision among community members when it comes to implementing new changes, if the conflict is not resolvable and the community wants two different things, then it often leads to a Fork of the chain. The forked chain starts out as a new blockchain while the original one continues on the same.
Why is there a need to fork the blockchain network?
Blockchain fork could be understood as a major split in the complete blockchain network. People are very well aware that blockchain is an open-source network and due to this anyone can make changes for the improvement of the network. A fork occurs when there is a disturbance or any kind of disorder in the blockchain network which is due to any change in the protocol. The fork creates a different version of blockchain and miners can choose whichever they want but generally, the latest version is used because generally, people are unable to see the transactions on the older one. People can fork the existing blockchain network or they can also create a completely new one.
There are two different types of a fork in the blockchain, Hard Fork and Soft work and both of them differ in functioning from each other.
Hard Fork
Hard Fork is a major change in the crypto protocol and at the same time, it also becomes completely incompatible with the previous versions as soon as the protocol changes. It is there to create some major changes in the existing protocol in order to improve it and it can also be used to create a completely new protocol and blockchain which is unique as well as independent. In a hard fork, all the miners or users need to upgrade to the latest version which includes the latest protocol changes in order to make their transactions valid. The reason behind updating to the latest version is because the older version gets outdated very quickly and hence the transactions done on the older version becomes completely useless. The major reasons behind hard fork are related to security or functionality of the network and to reverse transactions.
Soft Fork
Soft Fork is again referred to the changes made in the crypto protocol but it is quite different from Hard Fork. Here it has been seen that it is compatible with the previous versions because of which the transactions done on the older version does not become invalid. With Soft Fork there is not any compulsion to get updated with the latest version because the miners can continue processing new transactions and they can also push new blocks to the blockchain with the older version of the protocol. The only thing that miners will have to keep in mind here is that they should completely follow the rules of a new protocol. Until they are following the new protocol, there will not be any kind of problem with the older version.
Hard Fork on different networks
As blockchain is an open-source network, anyone can make changes in codes and create a Hard Fork. Due to this, there are a huge number of Hard Forks done on various crypto networks in which some were successful and become popular while many are still unknown or lost. Here are some of the most popular ones on huge networks.
Bitcoin XT
This Hard Fork was done on the Bitcoin network and it has to be noted that this was the first-ever hard fork on the Bitcoin network. Back in 2014, this was introduced by Mike Hearn and the reason behind this fork was to add some new features to the network. Before Bitcoin XT, the network allowed only 7 transactions per second and this Hard Fork was done to process a total of 24 transactions per second. During the time when it was launched, it became quite popular and successful but soon after a few months, it was not favoured much by the crypto users and miners and it ultimately went down.
Bitcoin Cash
One of the most popular and successful Hard Fork which has been done on Bitcoin Network till date is Bitcoin Cash. Several Bitcoin developers have created this hard fork back in 2017 and they end up making a completely new blockchain and cryptocurrency. This team was majorly focusing on increasing the maximum block size to 8 MB which will ultimately add more transactions to the block. Now the major benefit of this will be given to the Bitcoin users because the amount that they pay for transactions which are transaction fees, will be reduced to a great extent. If this has to be compared with Bitcoin then, Bitcoin is able to do only 7 transactions per second however, Bitcoin Cash can easily process 61 transactions per second which are a lot more than Bitcoin.
Ethereum Classic
Just like Bitcoin, there have been several forks in Ethereum including the both soft and hard. Among all the Ethereum forks, Ethereum Classic is one of the major Hard Fork on the network. It was revealed that this particular Hard Fork is based on the DAO event to a very great extent. The major reason behind introducing it was to remove the Difficulty Bomb problem and it was also focused towards reducing the time that is needed to create one block. After this particular Hard Fork, two blockchain networks were created, Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
Conclusion
In any system, technology or network, there is a need for a change after a certain period of time in order to cope up with the situation and to improve the functionality. Hard Fork is one such example that opens a gate for further improvements in any existing network or even creating a completely new one.
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