On a basic level, these forks arise out of different perspectives on transaction history, which can happen due to delays in the system. As Bitcoin became more and more popular, the blockchain technology it was built on slowed down, resulting in the entire system becoming unreliable and the transaction fees getting more expensive. Because of this slowdown, Bitcoin needed to create a solution that would scale as more users bought and sold the product. That’s where the forks came in. Forks allow for a different development structure and experimentation within the Bitcoin platform without compromising the original product. The original Bitcoin was developed on 1-megabyte blocks, which was limiting as the cryptocurrency scaled and became more popular. These forks can be developed on larger blocks and result in a brand-new currency.
How Bitcoin Forks Work
There are two types of Bitcoin forks—“soft forks” and “hard forks.” Here is how they work.
Soft Forks
A soft fork is a change to the Bitcoin protocol rather than a change to the end product. The big difference between a soft fork and a hard fork is that a soft fork is backward-compatible, which means that the new protocol will be recognized by old nodes within the system. It also means that there is not a new product being launched,
Hard Forks
Hard forks are new versions of Bitcoin that are completely split from the original version. There are no transactions or communications between the two types of Bitcoin after a hard fork. They are separate from each other, and the change is permanent. You can think of forks like organizational splits, with one part of a company moving in one direction, and another part of the company moving in another direction. That’s exactly what happened with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin Gold. These are all separate cryptocurrencies within the Bitcoin family, and all operate independently with different rules. They are all still cryptocurrencies but not the same as the original Bitcoin.
Types of Major Bitcoin Hard Forks
The two biggest Bitcoin hard forks are Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold, although there are others as well.
The Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork
Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin that occurred on August 1, 2017. It was designed to overcome the problems that Bitcoin was experiencing with delayed transactions and lag. To do that, it uses 8-megabyte blocks instead of the 1-megabyte blocks used by the original Bitcoin, making it easier to scale as more people interact with the service.
The Bitcoin Gold Hard Fork
Bitcoin Gold is a different hard fork that occurred in October 2017 with the goal of making Bitcoin mining a more equal process that requires only basic equipment. It’s mined on standard graphics processing units instead of specific hardware developed exclusively for the mining of Bitcoin (referred to as “ASICs”—application-specific integrated circuits), which is more expensive and limited to a few big players. The idea here was to increase the independence and decentralization inherent to the original Bitcoin concept.
Other Bitcoin Hard Forks
In addition to these two main hard forks, there has been a flurry of other hard forks and experimentation within the Bitcoin system. Here are a few of the other hard forks and when they started.
Bitcoin Diamond: November 2017Super Bitcoin: December 2017Bitcoin Atom: January 2018Bitcore: November 2017Bitcoin God: December 2017Bitcoin Private: January 2018Bitcoin Zeo: September 2018Bitcoin Post-Quantum: December 2018
