Hey Jesspeculators
I know the cryptocurrency market is seen as running on innovation; it's the buzz word thrown around to death along with the word blockchain, even when many of these projects aren't blockchains by definition. One of the more contentious decisions in the cryptocurrency space is the idea of a hard fork.
The hard fork is a protocol change that requires the consensus of the network. If consensus is achieved, all stakeholders be moving on a chain with the new changes. If consensus is not achieved, the chain will be split into two as network participants support the chain they prefer.
The vast majority of hard forks tend to be chain upgrades with consensus, but every so often, we see disagreements such as:
I know many of us to get hot and heavy at the sound of a hard fork either due to a token airdrop or upgrades that could make the token price go up, but do we ever ask are hard forks always the option to take.
As mentioned earlier, hard forks can result in two projects instead of one. This splits the network effect of the project, the capital invested in the project, the community supporting the project and affects transaction volumes and liquidity of the chain.
It doesn't take a genius to understand that the more you split off a chain, the more complicated it becomes. You can see that with Bitcoin forks; you can see it with ETH forks; you can even see it with EOS and STEEM forks. The more you fork, the more complicated the ecosystem becomes, as these chains don't tend to talk to one another.
This reduces the effectiveness of the project to cut through the noise and attract investment and grow its user base.
Yes, each chain is protected by the operators supporting it but splitting the support however which way means the chain is less decentralised, relies on fewer people for consensus, and makes it more vulnerable to centralised control or changes that are in the economic interest of the inner circles.
No, I don't think hard forks are inherently bad; I think that projects are far too quick to use them instead of trying to find consensus or find solutions that don't require base layer protocol changes.
What many see as a weakness of Bitcoin to be reluctant to hard fork, I think is a good thing. If you're a small chain with a few million in market cap, sure, hard fork your arse off, have at it, innovate, break things.
If you're Bitcoin, trying to be sound money, you need to show that you're not willing to change. That's how you retain faith in the system; you provide security in its monetary policy.
Sure, you can improve the security and bugs, but wholesale changes to a blockchain don't always mean a step forward for the project.
What do you good people of HIVE think?
So have at it my Jessies! If you don't have something to comment, "I am a Jessie."
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