Cryptoacademy Season 3 Week4- Homework post for @awesononso: Blockchain forks

1.) What is a Fork?
A fork in crypto terms is simply a tweak or an upgrade in the blockchain of an original digital coin due to the dissatisfaction of some or all nodes(Human operators) involved the Blockchain of the coin. This dissatisfaction can be caused by inefficiency of transactions, coding errors by developers, etc. Though some nodes may still agree and stick with the original Blockchain, others would want a change and that's where forks come in. There are two types of forks which are;

• Hard forks
• Soft forks
  

2.)What is a Hard fork?
By the name, it's guessable that this would be more materialistic than it's counterpart 😂. Hard forks or backward-incompatible forks are upgrades done on a Blockchain that result in the formation of a new Blockchain which moves parallel to the original Blockchain. Hard forks are normally done when not all but a good amount of nodes disagree with the running of Coin's Blockchain. So the when the upgrades are made, a new blockchain is formed thereby also meaning that a new coin is formed. This Blockchain formed will still have the same ancestry as the old chain but different denotions. An example of a crypto hard fork is Feathercoin. Feathercoin is a digital currency forked from Litecoin on the 16th of April, 2013. It was developed with aim of being what Litecoin was meant to be, a better version of Bitcoin which would be more stable, fast and very secure. As we would have it, feathercoin shares the same Genesis block with litecoin.

Source

3.)What is a soft fork?
A soft fork or backward-compatible fork is an actual upgrade to a Blockchain that does not involve the splitting of the Blockchain. In a soft fork the upgrade is done by just improving the features of the particular blockchain without any new chain being formed. In the soft fork upgrade, all or a huge majority of nodes must agree to it due to the fact that when it is done, unlike the hard fork, it affects both the old and new users. An example of a soft fork is the Bitcoin soft fork, Taproot. It is to be implemented by November 2021 and operates with the aim of making Bitcoin transactions faster, making the blockchain a little more private and also creating a basis for smart contract deployment.

4.)What are the differences between hard forks and soft forks?

Hard Forks	Soft forks
A new Blockchain is formed	No new block is formed
Not all the nodes must be dissatisfied before it's implementation	all or a vast majority of the nodes must be dissatisfied before it's implementation
The nodes have a choice to either continue with the old Blockchain or to switch to the upgrade	All nodes will continue to operate with the forked Blockchain.
The new blocks made are rendered invalid by previous blocks	The new blocks are still considered valid by the old blocks.

5.)Explain the following Bitcoin Forks and explore the blockchain where necessary. Indicate if they are hard forks or soft forks;

• Bitcoin Cash
• Segregated Witnesses

Bitcoin Cash: In August 2017, Bitcoin Cash was forked from the Bitcoin Blockchain with the sole aim of increasing blocks to accommodate more transactions in a single block. Bitcoin being made was to create an easy way for transactions to be made in a simple decentralized peer-to-peer system. But over time, it grew past it's expectations as it became very established and an investment asset. Due to this, a lot of transactions were being made and it had to be upgraded as it could only ermit 1000-1500 transactions per block. Bitcoin Cash as the upgrade allows up to 25000 per block and is mined easier. Bitcoin Cash is the hard fork of Bitcoin and it's crypto denotion is BCH. Bitcoin Cash shares the same ancestry(Block 1) with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin block 1

Bitcoin Cash block 1

Comparing the two blocks above, we can observe that they have the same hash, timestamp, number of transactions,etc. This is due to the fact that even though Bitcoin Cash has a separate Blockchain, it needs an ancestry and the Genesis block of the original coin(Bitcoin) serves as its ancestry.

Segregated Witnesses: This is a Bitcoin soft fork that was implemented to increase the number of transactions in a block by splitting a transaction into 2, removing the unlocking signature from its position and placing it at the end. This was basically changing the transaction format to acquire space for new transactions.

6.)Write on the Steem and Hive Hard fork and show similarities in their Genesis Blocks(Provide screenshots).

There was once a time that there was a disagreement between nodes of the steem Blockchain when the integration of the Tron Blockchain was proposed. Because of the disagreeing nodes, a hard fork was implemented and it was called hive. The Hive block chain being forked out of the steem Blockchain has very similar characteristics to the steem Blockchain. Steem and hive both share the same ancestral blocks as proof of their connection

Hive block 1

Steem block 1

As we can see on the screenshots provided, the genesis blocks of tge hive and Steem block chain are similar as they have the same timestamp, producer and hash.

Conclusion
As long as humans continue to work with Blockchain technology, there is bound to be a form of dissatisfaction. Forks are the upgrades given to these blockchains to satisfy the needs of the users. An interesting and very educative topic. Hope you like my homework and cant wait for the next challenge. Thank you.

CC: @awesononso