A fork is a situation in which a blockchain splits into two separate chains temporarily or permanently. Forks are a natural occurrence during mining, where two chains following the same consensus rules temporarily have the same accumulated proof-of-work and are both considered valid. They can also occur as a consequence of the use of two distinct sets of rules trying to govern the same blockchain. Forks have been used in cryptocurrencies in order to add new features to a blockchain or to reverse the effects of hacking or catostrophic bugs on a blockchain as was the case with the fork between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. Notably, blockchain forks have been widely discussed in the context of the bitcoin scalability problem.
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