https://DevOpsCloud.io -- Cloud Monk Losang Jinpa

Return to GitHub fork, fork

Snippet from Wikipedia: 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".^: glossary

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. 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.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0