The post Hard fork and soft fork in blockchain: Differences explained appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

At some point, every cryptocurrency needs to go through major changes that shake up the way it works. That’s where hard forks and soft forks come in. These are updates to the protocol that make significant adjustments to how the system operates. In this article, we’ll break down what hard fork and soft fork in blockchain are, why they’re necessary, and, most importantly, how they’re different from each other. What is a hard fork in blockchain? A hard fork in blockchain is a radical change to the protocol of a blockchain network. In simple terms, it is a software upgrade in a cryptocurrency network with which all nodes need to agree.  Should the hard fork be contentious, i.e., not all miners conform to the new rules set in place for the network, a chain split can occur, resulting in both the legacy blockchain as well as the upgraded blockchain functioning alongside one another as some miners continue to mine the “old” chain. This, for example, was the case with Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in August 2017. What is a soft fork in blockchain? A soft fork in blockchain is a change to the software protocol of a cryptocurrency that is backward-compatible with the previous version of the protocol. In other words, a soft fork is a change to the cryptocurrency that does not require all users to upgrade to the new version of the protocol.  Soft forks can be used to add new features to a cryptocurrency or to reverse transactions (as in the case of a blockchain re-organization). In a proof of work system, when a majority of miners (by hash power) upgrade to the new software, the soft fork will end and the blockchain will revert to a single congruous chain. Hard fork vs. soft fork…

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Filed under: News - @ January 28, 2025 11:24 am