Decentralization and consensus, two key ideas behind the first cryptocurrency, don’t always go hand in hand. Typically, new projects have been attributed to the desire of independent developers to improve certain networking aspects of Bitcoin. But not all projects have been and are successful. In essence, it is about creating an offshoot of the original blockchain. In principle, it doesn’t really matter to the user which version of the rules he uses, as they are all compatible with each other and the different protocols allow free exchange of coins.
In the case of a hardfork, the new rules are so severe that the new and old blockchain lose the ability to interact. That is, a hardfork actually creates a new blockchain based on the modified code of the original blockchain. In fact, we are talking about creating a new cryptocurrency based on an old one