Bitcoin-en.com
  • Home
  • Introduction
    • Videos Explain Bitcoin
    • Before you Own Bitcoin
    • Online Merchants that Accept Bitcoin
    • Free Bitcoin Courses
    • Bitcoin Hard Forks History
  • How-To
    • Install Bitcoin Core
    • Install Bitcoin-Qt Faster
    • Install Electrum Wallet
    • Backup Electrum Wallet
    • Choose Bitcoin Mining Hardware
    • Solo Mine Bitcoin
    • Learn Blockchain Programming
    • Buy Bitcoin >
      • Buy Bitcoin on Coinbase
      • Buy Bitcoin in the U.S.
    • Accelerate Bitcoin Transaction
  • Discuss Bitcoin

Bitcoin Hard forks
That succeeded in history

Bitcoin Hard Forks History


Hard Fork

Hard forks refers to the underlying blockchain of a digital currency forks into 2 chains initially due to the underlying rules change. After a hard fork, the blockchain conforms to the revised (upgraded) rules is only considered and accepted by nodes that support the new rules, whereas the original blockchain conforms to the original rules is only recognized by nodes that support the original rules. That is, the new rules are not compatible with the old existing rules. Think of hard fork as a possible permanent divergence of a block chain that might result in splitting a chain into two, thus producing an extra new coin for every existing coin.

Why Hard Fork

Digital currency build upon protocol and rules.

Rule, what rule?

For example, original Bitcoin protocol/rule is capable of processing 3-7 transactions per second, which is way too low for Bitcoin to become a transaction currency. Therefore, they were many thoughts to solve this 'problem'.

Bitcoin has other 'problems' too. For another example, wouldn't it be better if miners can mine coins using GPU and not necessary need to have ASIC based mining hardware? In order to 'solve' this particular 'problem', new rules were proposed to change the mining algorithm to not in favor of miners using ASICs.


To date, proposals were put in action to solve these 'problems' involve increasing block size limitation (e.g. BCH, B2X), or segregating some non-transactoin data from the block (e.g. Segregated Witness). 

Hardfork that Succeeded
​
There were many hard forks in Bitcoin history. Some of them failed for a reason or two - lack of consequent support, buggy software, When a hard fork failed to go on, the new chain wouldn't last too long after the split. For example, Bitcoin Unlimited, Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin XT [1] are among the dead list.

Ever wonder what successful hard forks had happened in Bitcoin's history since its inception? ​We compile a list of successful hard forks and upgrade events and the attributes of the new coin each fork/upgrade introduced.
Date Name Block Size Mining Algorithm Mining Hardware Segwit Difficult Adjustment Max Supply Amount Encrypted
2009/1/3 Bitcoin (BTC) 1M SHA256 ASIC Y 2 Weeks 21 Million N
2017/8/1 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) 8M SHA256 ASIC N 2 Weeks + EDA 21 Million N
2017/10/23 Bitcoin Gold (BTG) 1M Equihash GPU Y 10 Minutes (every block) 21 Million N
2017/11/16 (cancelled) SegWit2x (B2X) 2M SHA256 ASIC Y 2 Weeks 21 Million N
2017/11/24 Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) 8M OPTIMIZED X13 GPU Y 2 Weeks 210 Million Y
2018/5/15 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) 32M (was 8M) [3] SHA256 ASIC N 2 Weeks + EDA 21 Million N
2018/11/15 Bitcoin SV (BSV) 128M SHA256 ASIC N 21 Million N
Among the above listed coins in Bitcoin family, BTC and BCH both ranked high in terms of market capital. BTG is quite new and is not yet widely supported by exchanges, and B2X was cancelled after it had got big players like Coinbase promises to support it. Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) is very new.

There were many other fork attempts in the past [2]. However, not all of them survived.
​

UPDATE:

As of 2017/11/8, the planned hard fork of Bitcoin SegWit2x (B2x) had been called off. [1]

[1] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000685.html
​
[2] ​https://bitcoiner.today/en/bitcoin-forks-btc-b2x-segwit2x-btg-gold-btx-bitcore-bch-cash-bcd-diamond-and-more/
[3] Bitcoin Cash protocol upgrade on May 15

Still not sure what Bitcoin is about?

Just ask a Bitcoin question and the community may help. We strive to get every question answered.
ask question
© 2013 - 2022 bitcoin-en & bitcoin-tw All Rights Reserved. About Us.
  • Home
  • Introduction
    • Videos Explain Bitcoin
    • Before you Own Bitcoin
    • Online Merchants that Accept Bitcoin
    • Free Bitcoin Courses
    • Bitcoin Hard Forks History
  • How-To
    • Install Bitcoin Core
    • Install Bitcoin-Qt Faster
    • Install Electrum Wallet
    • Backup Electrum Wallet
    • Choose Bitcoin Mining Hardware
    • Solo Mine Bitcoin
    • Learn Blockchain Programming
    • Buy Bitcoin >
      • Buy Bitcoin on Coinbase
      • Buy Bitcoin in the U.S.
    • Accelerate Bitcoin Transaction
  • Discuss Bitcoin