Bitcoin was divided into two coins in the summer of 2017: bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH). A hard fork is what's known as a split like that, and later that year, more forks appeared using blockchain development company.
A hard fork (or hard fork) is a major change to a network's protocol about blockchain technology that makes previously invalid blocks and transactions valid, or vice versa. Every node and user must upgrade to the most recent protocol version following a hard fork.
Understanding Fork
When the majority of blockchain users cannot agree on an upgrade, a fork in blockchain results. A lack of agreement on divisive software updates has led to hard forks in several blockchain/cryptocurrency networks, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.
One can distinguish between accidental and purposeful forks. Accidental forks occur when two or more blocks are discovered at once. They are resolved when new blocks are added and one of the chains becomes longer than the other.
Intentional forks, or the second class of blocks, come in two varieties—hard forks and soft forks—and modify the blockchain's rules.
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Understanding Hard Fork
A hard fork is a rule change that significantly alters the whole protocol of a blockchain network. A blockchain's creators or members of the community can create a fork.
All nodes intended to operate following the new rules must update their software because, in comparison to the old rules, valid blocks produced using the new rules may be viewed as invalid or invalid blocks will be viewed as valid.
Since a hard fork permanently diverges from the prior version of the blockchain, it effectively creates a brand-new currency. The new, improved blockchain will be followed by a new path and the old path by the other. The users of that specific blockchain have the option of upgrading and taking one path, or not upgrading and continuing on the other. The term "backward-incompatible" describes this.
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Reason to Hard Fork a Blockchain
Add New Functionality
Code for Blockchain is updated frequently. Since the majority of public blockchains are open source, people from all over the world develop them. The improvements and issues are created, resolved and new versions must be released when the time is suitable.
Address Security Issues
Compared to traditional money (notes, coins, and checks), blockchain (and cryptocurrency on top of it) are relatively new technology. And studies are currently being conducted to fully understand them. To address the security vulnerabilities that develop along the process, new versions and updates should be made available.
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To Reverse Transactions
If the community discovers that a certain period's transactions were compromised and malevolent, it has the power to nullify them all.
Some Instances of Hard Forks
Since the launch of blockchain technology with Bitcoin in 2009, there have been several notable hard forks. As an illustration, consider Bitcoin.
In 2014, when Bitcoin XT split apart from Bitcoin, it underwent one of the first hard splits in history. The maximum transaction rate for Bitcoin was suggested to be increased from seven to 24 per second. To do this, each new block's size was increased from one megabyte to eight. The Bitcoin XT project, however, lost interest quickly after the fork and is no longer in use.
Following the failure of Bitcoin XT, a new proposal to increase Bitcoin's block size was made. Another hard fork occurred in 2017 and gave rise to the new cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash (CRYPTO: BCH). A hard fork in Bitcoin Cash occurred in 2018, resulting in the creation of Bitcoin Cash ABC (the original version) and Bitcoin Cash SV (CRYPTO: BSV), a brand-new parallel network.
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Conclusion
Hard forks are crucial for the cryptocurrency development space to develop further over time. They spread in popularity over time and make sure that the crypto industry develops following community opinion. Many hard forks have resulted in the creation of worthwhile coins like Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash. Therefore, in the long run, these forks are crucial for better crypto offerings. The key is to conduct research before investing.
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