When it comes to Bitcoin, a fork would happen when the Blockchain gets divided into two separate paths and move forward. The fork would determine how a transaction is valid after such a split takes place. People who are using a specific Blockchain will have to support one path after the split and show their support towards it.
Forks are a relatively new concept to this world. However, it is possible for you to find many different types of forks out there in the world. Some forks have the ability to resolve on their own whereas others don’t. The forks are being fueled by the deep rifts that take place within the community. It can lead a network towards permanent split as well. In such a split, two different Blockchain histories would be created. In other words, there would be two separate currencies.
Basics about forks
Forks can simply be defined as a byproduct, which would arise as a result of consensus. When two different miners figure out a block nearly at the same time, a fork would happen. The ambiguity associated with them would resolve when the subsequent blocks are being added into one. This would result in the creation of the longest chain. In the meantime, the other block would get orphaned by the network.
It is possible to introduce forks willingly into the network. Such a thing would take place when the Bitcoin developers are looking forward to change the rules that are being used by software to decide whether a specific transaction is a valid one or not. When the Blockchain has invalid transactions, the network would ignore that block. The miner who found that block would then lose the reward associated with it. Therefore, the miners will only have to mine valid blocks in order to give life to a long chain.
Forks can be divided into two main categories as hard forks and soft forks.
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