Get the weekly summary of crypto market analysis, news, and forecasts! This Week’s Summary The crypto market ends the week at a total market capitalization of $2,17 trillion. Bitcoin continues to trade at around $62,300. Ethereum experiences no changes and stagnates at around $2,400. XRP is down by 2%, Solana by 1%, and Dogecoin by 3%. Almost all altcoins are trading in the red, with very few exceptions. The DeFi sector decreased the total value of protocols (TVL) to around…
Historical Hard fork Events Every Crypto Enthusiasts Should Know About
Blockchains have been gaining attention since the history of crypto. The highly advanced systems help decentralize and streamline financial systems globally.
As the blockchain systems grow, investors start noticing issues and propose an upgrade. However, for any upgrade to occur, blockchain requires the consensus of all participants. If there is no consensus, two factions with opposite ideas may form.
The developers may choose to go ahead with the upgrade but maintain the status quo in the original chain. At that point, a blockchain hard fork occurs, creating two systems. Therefore, hard forks are blockchain upgrades that lead to the chain split.
In crypto history, there are multiple notable hard forks, especially in top blockchains like bitcoin and Ethereum. Keep reading to know the most common and popular crypto hard forks.
Bitcoin Based Hard forks
Bitcoin XT Hardfork (Failed)
Of course, the Bitcoin XT launch was the first hard fork in the Bitcoin and crypto ecosystems. This hard fork occurred in 2014, proposed and implemented by Mike Hearn. The intention was to improve the network’s speed from 7 to 24 transactions per second (TPS).
Although the project was quite successful initially, it must be made available. As a result, investors abandoned it in preference of Bitcoin and other currencies.
Bitcoin Cash Hardfork
Bitcoin cash hard fork is the most notable in the bitcoin and crypto ecosystems. This hard fork created the most successful project in the crypto space today. It became official in 2017, and immediately BCH wallets began rejecting BTC transactions.
BCH had its fair share of success in the crypto markets. Currently, it’s the 26th-largest crypto asset and the most successful bitcoin hard fork.
Bitcoin Gold Hardfork
Bitcoin gold (BTG) is another fork in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The bitcoin gold fork also occurred in 2017, just after the launch of bitcoin cash. This had some unique reason for launch; it aimed to make mining easy.
Mining bitcoin was a little tricky, especially for miners using laptops. More technologies like ASICs and stronger GPUs became a requirement. BTG reduced the resource requirement while still using a very efficient POW consensus.
Others Smaller Bitcoin Hard forks
As mentioned earlier, the bitcoin chain is home to several hard forks. Here are other less notable bitcoin hard forks;
- Bitcoin Classic: Bitcoin Classic creation was in 2016. This one also came up with the primary intention of improving the speed of Bitcoin.
- Bitcoin unlimited launched to allow miners to choose their block size. It has a maximum block size of 16MB. It never gained adoption.
The Ethereum Based Hard forks
A Case for Ethereum Classic
Ethereum has also been the home of multiple ethereum hard forks. The most popular and controversial of Ethereum’s hard forks is the Ethereum classic. This fork arose in mid-2016 when developers discovered a vulnerability within Ethereum DAO. The vulnerability led to the loss of around 3.6 million ETH.
The Ethereum developing team created the hard fork to recover the funds. After the fork, two factions argued about how the developing team handled the issue.
One group approved, while another disapproved of the fork’s creation. The former group continued with the hard fork, while the latter remained with the old chain. The old chain is now Ethereum Classic.
Ether Zero
Ether Zero is another Ethereum chain fork launched in January 2019. It came to introduce a better blockchain for launching decentralized applications.
However, Ether zero is less successful than the Ethereum classic.
Bitcoin Cash Fork- Bitcoin Satoshi Vision
Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) is the only Bitcoin cash-known hard fork. Bitcoin SV launched in 2018, aiming to achieve high scalability in service provision.
BSV intended to replace payment systems by providing better services and top security. The maximum coin count for BSV is 21 million, and the circulating supply is a little over 19 million. It ranks number 55 in CMC.
Litecoin-Based Hardfork: Litecoin Cash
Litecoin Cash is a fork of the Litecoin chain. This fork was launched in 2018 to help provide efficiency to the then-Litecoin investors. Litecoin cash aimed to streamline mining and transactions. It fits nicely in the list since it’s the only real Litecoin fork.
Final Word
Blockchain hard forks are a big part of the history of crypto. Their existence helped in expanding the crypto world while bolstering efficiency. The hard forks mentioned above are the most notable ones in crypto history.
Although it does not exist today, Bitcoin XT was the first crypto hard fork project. Afterward, bitcoin saw more projects that were more successful, like BCH and BTG. BCH also underwent a fork leading to the creation of BSV, a top 100 coin. The Ethereum chain has forks like Ethereum classic and Ether Zero. Litecoin’s fork, Litecoin cash, is not very popular, but it exists.
Recently, several projects have been introducing hard forks without splitting the chain. The London fork is a good example. The Alonzo fork (Cardano) and Taproot (Bitcoin) are good examples.
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