hard fork

English

Noun

hard fork (plural hard forks)

1. (cryptocurrencies) A rule change of a blockchain such that the software validating according to the old rules will see the blocks produced according to the new rules as invalid; the new blockchain resulting from such a split.

   Coordinate term: soft fork

   Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin.

   • 2017 November 8, Alex Hern, “'$300m in cryptocurrency' accidentally lost forever due to bug”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Some are pushing for a “hard fork” of Ethereum, which would undo the damage by effectively asking 51% of the currency’s users to agree to pretend that it had never happened in the first place.

   • 2020, Lorne Lantz, Daniel Cawrey, Mastering Blockchain, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 61:

     As it pertains to blockchain technology, a hard fork is an upgrade to mining software that makes a change to the network that requires the participation of all miners.

Further reading

• fork (blockchain) § Hard fork on Wikipedia.Wikipedia