Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
August 14, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- There are hard forks,
soft forks, and even user activated soft forks. Overall, remember
that all of them are essentially different versions of the original
Bitcoin blockchain.
As the Crypto news
outlet Blockgeeks puts it, its not quite enough to
know what these forks are, it is also essential to understand why
people felt the need to bring them about in the first
place.
For the purposes of clarity, we
will stick to a brief overview of the most powerful Bitcoin forks
here, but you can reasonably expect more in-depth pieces on the
subject in the future.
First and foremost, there is
Bitcoin Cash. Regardless of what its chief proponents say, it is at
its core, a Bitcoin fork.
Bitcoin Cash sprung from the debate
on what the block size should be for the main Bitcoin chain.
Furthermore, Bitcoin Cash supporters did not see SegWit as a
legitimate upgrade for the scaling capabilities of the Bitcoin
network.
Remember that SegWit was a
technical solution that was suggested by the famed Bitcoin
developer, Pieter Wiulle, who said that it
would increase how many transactions Bitcoin blocks could
hold, by changing how transaction data was put onto the Bitcoin
chain.
A big debate ensued in which many
Bitcoin stakeholders basically concluded that SegWit was only a
short term fix to scaling issues, which prompted the introduction
of SegWit 2x in 2017, that had
the aim of addressing this supposed problem.
Overall, those who would eventually
become participants in the Bitcoin Cash chain continued to disagree
until Bitcoin hard forked, with the original chain keeping a block
size of around 1 megabyte, which was in line with Satoshi
Nakamoto’s original vision for the network. Here, by hard fork, we
mean a change to the network’s blockchain that changes the way
transactions are validated, causing all users to need to update
their versions of the chain.
Because some users refused to,
Bitcoin Cash was born. In addition to this, it also came from the
apparent need for much larger blocks and today, it is almost the
same as Bitcoin, except that it has not enjoyed any major updates
like SegWit and SegWit 2x, and it has blocks that
reach up to 32 megabytes in
size.
We mentioned Bitcoin Cash first,
because it is, by far, the most successful Bitcoin fork, arguably
chiefly due to the ardent support of people like Roger Ver, who was one of the
industry’s pioneers in terms of investing.
Even so, based on financially
measured market dominance, Bitcoin Cash is still far behind
Bitcoin, in terms of success.
Beyond Bitcoin Cash are several
more forks, ranging from Bitcoin
Diamond to Bitcoin Private to just about
any variation of the name that you can think of. To sum up the
histories of all of these forks, simply based on technical success
put together with legitimate publicity, none have shown a true
chance at becoming a leader in the space.
When all of them are
considered, Bitcoin Gold is the most successful based
on financial indicators. For now, it holds the number 26 spot on
Coinmarketcap. As to what makes it different, by all appearances,
Bitcoin Gold is the same as Bitcoin except for one or two possible
differentiators. First, it aims to be more secure and more
decentralized by running on the Equihash algorithm, which you may know of because of
it also running the Zcash network. Second, it has lofty future
goals which include running a DEX(decentralized exchange), as well
as allowing for side chains, which is a capability that Bitcoin is
not currently the leader in.
Despite all of this, given that
Bitcoin controls over 50% of the market as of this week, no fork is
even close to being on its level. On the other hand, it does not
hurt to understand this phenomenon of forking, so that you can make
more informed choices with your Crypto investment opportunities in
the future.
By: BGN Editorial Staff
News:
Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin
(BTC)
Bitcoin Gold
(BTG)
Bitcoin Diamond
(BCD)
Bitcoin Private
(BTCP)
ZCASH (ZEC)
Bitcoin Cash
(BCH)
Blockchain