WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT FORKS
Earlier this week I visited @belemo at his place and we talked about a couple of things including hive-related stuff and he also helped me out with some things I was trying to figure out.
As a new member of the hive community, I was curious as to how hive was formed so I decided to ask him about the origin of Hive. He was kind enough to give me a brief but yet insightful explanation about the origin of Hive.
So basically hive was created out of a community-led fork of the Steem blockchain after Steemit Inc was sold to the CEO of TRON Foundation, Justin Sun.
The intention for a fork at that time was as a result of a "takeover" orchestrated by Justin Sun which a large group of the Steem community members was not in support of and decided to hard fork the Steem blockchain thereby creating Hive.
So what is a Fork?
A fork in the blockchain world occurs when there is a change in the protocol of the blockchain network. This brings about a split in the blockchain, therefore producing a new blockchain.
These changes can either be permanent or temporary. Forks are upgrades to the blockchain's existing software protocol. If there happens to be a cryptocurrency running on the main blockchain, a new cryptocurrency will be created on the new blockchain as a result of the fork.
Forks usually happen when the nodes or community members of a blockchain network can't come to a unanimous consensus regarding the future of the blockchain. There are two types of forks namely: Hard Forks and Soft Forks.
Hard Forks: A hard fork requires that the rules of the blockchain protocol be changed or updated. This change means that the old blockchain becomes incompatible with the blockchain's new software protocol.
A hard fork alters the blockchain in a manner that requires the participants of the network to make a change to keep participating and validating transactions.
Soft Fork: A soft fork also requires an upgrade of the blockchain's protocol. But unlike the hard fork, participants of the blockchain that did not upgrade to the new software protocol will still be able to participate in validating and verifying transactions.
Participants who did not upgrade will continue to recognize new blocks and maintain compatibility with the network. Therefore soft forks are backward compatible with older versions of a blockchain software protocol.