Hard forks explained

Hard fork is a radical change to a network’s protocol which results in the emergence of the new crypto. It can occur in any blockchain. Forks are intended to upgrade the network, fix existing vulnerabilities, and add new functionality.

🔸It requires users to upgrade the software to the new version. For example, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was forked from Bitcoin when the original coin failed to meet the scalability expectations and transaction fees drastically increased. Within the forked branch (BCH), the community agreed to increase the block size and the speed of the mining process.

🔸Holders of tokens in the original blockchain are granted assets in the forked branch as well. This means that, for example, if you had Bitcoins and upgraded your software to match the BCH protocol, you wouldn’t lose coins. Thus, users are free to decide whether to stick to the old version of the software or to upgrade to the new one depending on their personal convenience.

WhiteBIT Team