Why are bitcoin hard forks successful than Ethereum hard forks?

The hard fork is very much like that of a spin-off biological species resulting in two different species, one that follows the old and new rules. Visit Tesler to improve bitcoin trading through the optimal use of artificial intelligence and best trading strategies. It is scarce for such radical changes to occur to a currency (in this case, bitcoin) as radical changes often result in hard forks, which are often not stable, so it is interesting to look at why bitcoin’s hard forks are successful as compared to Ethereum.

The difference between a soft fork and a hard fork is pretty simple: soft forks only change how some parts of the blockchain interact with one another and even then, only in specific instances; conversely, if you were to do a hard fork, then you would be making changes to all parts of the blockchain protocol. So, essentially, you would be making a radical change to the blockchain protocol itself.

As I have said before, the number of hard forks in bitcoin has been tremendously low, with only four significant hard forks occurring. In contrast, Ethereum has had numerous hard forks, which have resulted in different versions of the currency. So why is this? The answer lies within the core developers and miners, who can control what happens about changes being made to the blockchain. So let’s find out the reasons behind the massive success of bitcoin hard forks compared to Ethereum hard forks.

What is a hard fork?

A hard fork results in the massive alternation in the protocol of blockchain of a particular cryptocurrency, resulting in two ledgers, the token constructed upon the new flanged blockchain is known as hard forked cryptocurrency.

There have been four significant hard forks in bitcoin:

1) Bitcoin cash:  In August 2017, bitcoin cash came into existence due to the bitcoin hard fork. Bitcoin cash was aimed at providing instant payments (speedy transactions) at low fees, which would eventually replace fiat currencies.

The main aim of Bitcoin Cash is to enable people to transact without delay as well as at minimal cost and also, to enable people to have complete control over their money. In addition, Bitcoin cash increased the block size to 8MB, allowing more transactions per block than the original bitcoin, resulting in a faster confirmation time for transactions.

2) Bitcoin gold:  Like Bitcoin cash, Bitcoin gold is similar to bitcoin cash in the way it was created due to the hard fork. The main difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin gold is that the first support SegWit while Bitcoin gold keeps with the old version of blockchain. This hard fork aimed to increase the bitcoin block size to 8MB, resulting in fewer fees than the original bitcoin.

Ethereum Hard Forks:

Ethereum Classic:  Ethereum classic was started by a group of developers who believed that Ethereum should have reverted to its original state (before the DAO hack). As a result of this belief, they launched the Ethereum classic in July 2015 after the hack happened.

Ethereum classic aimed to return the “Hard Forks” back to the original state. In addition, the Ethereum classic team wanted to keep records and codes for its development open for everyone to review, modify and build upon. The reasons behind the bitcoin hard fork being so successful as compared to the hard fork of any cryptocurrency:

1. The core developing team aims to resolve significant issues;

Bitcoin is a minimalist protocol when compared to Ethereum. The core developers rarely make radical changes to bitcoin; instead, they work on improving the existing protocol. The reason behind these changes is that if radical changes are made to bitcoin, the resulting hard fork would be unstable at best.

2. Bitcoin has a better development team:

The developers of Ethereum were unable to increase the block size of the blockchain. In contrast, in the case of bitcoin, as a result of a hard fork, the block size was increased in some way after seeing slow transaction confirmation time and high transaction fees. Also, Ethereum has gone through numerous hacks, and even DAO has been hacked, while Bitcoin is yet to witness any hack or theft even though it is much more established.

3. Bitcoin Maximalism:

Bitcoin maximalism is an ideology where maximalists think no cryptocurrency can ever be better than bitcoin and bitcoin is everything the world needs to revolutionize global finance Even though Ethereum has been working very hard in developing its platform, the result is that they are still behind bitcoin in terms of speed and transaction fees. However, there is no doubt that Bitcoin has been highly successful as it has been growing exponentially in value over the years and will continue to do so many years ahead.