What is a fork
Fork. Fork) is to make changes to the blockchain’s rules of operation. In essence, it is about creating an offshoot of the original blockchain. Forks come in two main types: soft (soft) and hard (hard).
In the first case, nodes in the new version of the blockchain retain the ability to interact with 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. There is a page on GitHub dedicated to suggestions for improving Bitcoin -it’s basically a list of suggestions for creating softforks on the Bitcoin network for the sake of improving it.
Two of the most popular and successful examples of Bitcoin softforks:
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SegWit (Segregated Witness, July 2017) is a scalability improvement solution designed to reduce the size limitation of the Bitcoin blockchain, allowing more transactions to be added to each block, thereby increasing the speed of transactions on the network. SegWit has opened the door for second-tier solutions like the Lightning Network, for example.
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Taproot (November 2021) is Bitcoin’s second most important softfork. The update may be ignored, then the hardfork is unsuccessful.
Or, the most common option for Bitcoin: some users accept the new rules of the game, while the rest stay with the old ones. Then you get two different cryptocurrencies with a common (until they are separated) blockchain. Bitcoin’s block size remains as it was.
The Bitcoin Unlimited project has found its way into another Bitcoin hardfork: Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Bitcoin Cash has gotten a Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH ABC) branch as a result of another hardfork of its own. ABC stands for Adjustable Block-size Cap – Adjustable Block-size Limit. Bitcoin Unlimited has thus achieved the realization of its idea, but not as an offshoot of Bitcoin, but as a
A hardfork of a hardfork of a hardfork.Bitcoin Cash (2017)
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was implemented as a Bitcoin hardfork in August 2017 as a response to the SegWit softfork. To achieve the goal, the enthusiasts did not use the SegWit protocol, but increased the block size first from 1MB to 8MB and then to 32MB. The former is an extension of BCH and the latter, dubbed Satoshi’s Vision, is a new cryptocurrency designed to mimic the return of the original Bitcoin as it was before all the softforks.
Bitcoin Gold (2017)
Bitcoin Gold (BTG) was realized in October 2017, just a few months after Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Gold follows the same principles as Bitcoin, with the key difference being the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm. The idea behind changing the proof-of-work algorithm is to decentralize the mining process, reducing the role of big players and mining pools.
To qualify for rewards, BTC miners must use specialized hardware, ASICs, which makes traditional video cards for the previous mining boom uncompetitive