There are 2 truths in the Crypto Space...

First, "The Moon is always around the corner",

and

Second, there will always be Hard forks on the chain.

Recently, there are 2 Hard Fork events that occurred in the crypto space which we would like to talk about in this short post. Over the past 10 years of crypto-history, there are many instances and types of forks that a comprehensive list of them (including the juicy drama behind each of them) could probably make for a good crypto book.

What is a Hard Fork?

To start, let's talk about Forks.

A "Fork" in crypto terms is when a Blockchain - the underlying protocol layer and database of a cryptocurrency, "splits" into two (or more) after a certain block moving forward. In that sense, if you hold a coin that has forked, there will be 2 (or more) versions of itself.

Each version of the coins will not be interoperable with each other. Meaning, if you hold a "Coin A" whose blockchain has forked into 2, you would not end up with 2 Coin A. Instead, you would own 1 Coin A1 and 1 Coin A2 - A1 and A2 being the chains A has been split from.

Here's the thing, forks happen all the time, even coins that have not split. Do you know that Steem has experienced a Hard Fork more than 20 times since it was first launched? But even so, there are no "Steem Cash" or "Steem Classic" around. This is because when it Hard Forks each and every of the past 20 times, the "other" chain died and faded away.

A Hard fork can mean two things:

Unanimous Hard Fork - the "Steem" type Hard Fork, when all the participants agree with the fork. This will not result in a chain and usually happens when a blockchain goes through a "network upgrade".

Contentious Hard Fork - When the chain splits into two. This happens when 2 versions of the chain get maintained by different nodes and miners. One biggest example of a contentious Hard Fork is Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash. When some users disagree with the "network upgrade" of Bitcoin that resulted in Segwit.

Unanimous Hard Fork - Grin

Grin completed its planned hard fork on July 17, 2019. This is the first of the four planned hard forks over the next 2 years as Grin developers implement new upgrades to make the network more robust and complete the roadmap its increase privacy on the chain.

The hard fork basically brought 2 major changes to the network:

1. Increased resistance against ASIC miners - Grin mining is currently GPU-friendly, the hard fork ensures it remains so.
2. Greater Wallet capability - Grin wallet 2.0.0 now have greater capability, new types of wallets can be made due to the changes in Grin's "bulletproof rewind scheme". Multisig will soon be a possibility on Grin.

This Hard Fork did not result in a chain split, as all users agree to move to the new chain.

Contentious Hard Fork - Ycash

Ycash is a "friendly" contentious hard fork of Zcash.

The idea of forking the coin was put to motion when members of the Zcash community decided to split off from the Zcash chain as they wanted to change certain underlying principles of the blockchain.

Basically, there are 3 key changes that will result from the Ycash hard fork.

1. Preserve Zcash’s Founders Reward (capped at 2.1 million) by reducing the Founders Reward rate from 20% to a perpetual 5%.
2. Founders Reward will be called Ycash Development Fund (YDF).
3. Ycash will push for ASIC resistance (mining with commodity hardware) which was no longer pursued on the Zcash blockchain

Steem Hard Fork 21

As you all know, the Steem blockchain is also preparing for a Hard Fork. Developers are ironing out the testnet and it is only a matter of time before hard fork 21 gets implemented.

To put it very simple, Hard Fork 21 will bring about 3 main changes:

1. Moving from a linear rewards curve to a convergent linear rewards curve. (This means the number of votes will accentuate the effect of each vote.)
2. Increasing the percentage of rewards that are distributed to curators. (SP holders have more incentive to curate and vote content as they are rewarded more.)
3. Creation of a separate downvote pool. (Downvotes will not affect voting power)

The hard fork will also come with performance upgrades that will benefit the network speed and robustness.

@coingecko will support the proposal brought forth by Hard Fork 21. We are very glad that such changes are finally in motion as we can see the obvious benefit to the users of the Steem Blockchain.

If you support us and what we do, kindly support our witness campaign with your vote of confidence.

Steem Connect: https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=coingecko&approve=1