Fork (blockchain)

In blockchain, a fork is defined variously as:

  • "What happens when a blockchain diverges into two potential paths forward",
  • "A change in protocol", or
  • A situation that "occurs when two or more blocks have the same block height".[1]: glossary [a]

Forks are related to the fact that different parties need to use common rules to maintain the history of the blockchain. When parties are not in agreement, alternative chains may emerge. While most forks are short-lived some are permanent. Short-lived forks are due to the difficulty of reaching fast consensus in a distributed system. Whereas permanent forks (in the sense of protocol changes) have been used to add new features to a blockchain, they can also be used to reverse the effects of hacking such as the case with Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, or avert catastrophic bugs on a blockchain as was the case with the bitcoin fork on 6 August 2010.[citation needed] The concept of blockchain technology was first introduced in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” in a white paper describing the design of a decentralized digital currency called Bitcoin. Blockchain forks have been widely discussed in the context of the bitcoin scalability problem.[4][5][6]

  1. ^ Antonopoulos, Andreas (2017). Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain (2 ed.). USA: O' Reilly media, inc. p. Glossary. ISBN 978-1491954386.
  2. ^ Thieme, Nick (4 August 2017). "Bitcoin Has Split Into Two Cryptocurrencies. What, Exactly, Does That Mean?". Slate. Archived from the original on 8 March 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  3. ^ Wu, Xun (Brian); Sun, Weimin (2018). Blockchain Quick Start Guide. Birmingham: Packt Publishing Ltd. p. 21. ISBN 978-1-78980-797-4.
  4. ^ Croman, Kyle; Eyal, Ittay (2016). "On Scaling Decentralized Blockchains" (PDF). Financial Cryptography and Data Security. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 9604. pp. 106–125. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-53357-4_8. ISBN 978-3-662-53356-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 May 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
  5. ^ Jordan Pearson (14 October 2016). "'Bitcoin Unlimited' Hopes to Save Bitcoin from Itself". Motherboard. Vice Media LLC. Archived from the original on 18 January 2017. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  6. ^ Oscar Williams-Grut and Rob Price (26 March 2017). "A Bitcoin civil war is threatening to tear the digital currency in 2 — here's what you need to know". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 2 July 2017. Retrieved 2 July 2017.


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