Hard Fork

An event when a cryptoasset on a blockchain has a divergence in its transaction history and is duplicated into two separate histories. Effectively results in a split of the asset into two versions of itself which are incompatible until either one fork is abandoned or becomes a separate asset all together.

Most major crypto assets including bitcoin and ethereum have had hard forks.

References

  1. Schneier, Bruce. 2019. ‘There’s No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology’. Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/.
  2. Rosenthal, David. n.d. ‘Stanford Lecture on Cryptocurrency’. Accessed 2 March 2022. https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html.
  3. Plant, Luke. 2022. ‘The Technological Case against Bitcoin and Blockchain’. Luke Plant’s Home Page. 5 March 2022. https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/the-technological-case-against-bitcoin-and-blockchain/.
  4. Weaver, Nicholas. 2018. Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies: Burn It With Fire. Berkeley School of Information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCHab0dNnj4.
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