Andreas Antonopoulos: the forks

New week, new video Q & A of Andreas Antonopoulos . Today, the discussion revolves around the different forms of fork. What characterizes them? How come to a fork ?

What is the difference between a fork of the Bitcoin client software and a fork of the Bitcoin protocol?

In fact, we use the word fork to describe three different scenarios.

First of all, creating a fork in the software is a very common thing. You will find many examples on Github . It simply means creating an alternative version of this project where different developers pursue distinct goals and that does not necessarily change the rules of consensus.

A network fork is a fork occurring in the network. Here, the network is divided in two and this can happen even without any change in the rules of consensus .

A fork of consensus is a change in consensus rules. There are two types of consensus fork:

• The soft fork where the rules have become more restrictive and therefore the clients who follow the old rules can always follow the new rules.
• The hard fork where the rules have become less strict . Thus, customers who follow the old rules will consider the new rules invalid in certain circumstances.

Why is a new currency created when the forks occur?

As the currencies are no longer interchangeable, you can not continue to use the same currency. Inevitably, prices will diverge because currencies will behave differently . There are therefore technical barriers - blockchain, rules, etc. - and economic barriers - the behavior of the currency, supply and demand - to the use of a single digital currency following a hard fork.When a hard fork occurs, the rules change , and the news is no longer compatible with the old ones . This is what characterizes the hard fork. Therefore, you can not switch from one network to another, the two networks become separate . They have forked and are now separate blockchains with separate rules.

Does the Bitcoin network stop for reasons of maintenance or updating of the system?

No, unlike the banking system, Bitcoin is in service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

According to Bitcoinuptime.com , the Bitcoin network has been running for 99.992% of the time since January 3, 2009 . According to Andreas Antonopoulos , the missing thousandth of a percent is due to a fork that caused a bug in 2013 . This fork did not even stop the system, but delayed it by 25 blocks .

The impressive availability of the Bitcoin network is one of the cornerstones of the effectiveness of the currency . When we combine this uninterrupted availability with the ever increasing security of the network, we arrive at the almost flawless system that is Bitcoin.

How does the community come to consensus during a soft fork, since people vote via their processor? Does not this method give all power to minors?

At first sight, it seems that minors concentrate all decision-making power . However, the miners have costs, and to cover them, they must be able to sell mined cryptocurrency. To do this, they need exchanges, wallets and merchants . In fact, for these wallets and exchanges to work, it is necessary for users to make transactions with the minted currency .

Therefore, if the miners introduce a change that is not followed by the rest of the Bitcoin economy , they create a new blockchain , but will be unable to sell the crypto-currency from this blockchain.

Indeed, exchange platforms would not support it and users would not want it . Moreover, a massive departure of miners from one cryptocurrency to another would create a vacuum that the miners of other blockchains would hasten to fill. Certainly, the absence of competition would induce greater rewards for the miners and therefore better profits. Miners having "forked" would be quickly replaced by others, seizing the opportunity thus created.