The difference between hard fork and soft fork

A hard fork means that when the Bitcoin consensus mechanism changes, it is incompatible with the native protocol. Some nodes that have not been upgraded cannot verify the blocks generated by the upgraded nodes. Then everyone continues the chain that they think is correct, so it is divided into two chain.

In addition to hard forks, there is also a kind of fork called soft fork, which refers to the blockchain network system version or protocol that is compatible with the native protocol after the version or protocol is upgraded. The old nodes continue to accept the blocks created by the new nodes, and the new and old nodes We still work on the same chain and no new chain is created.

The biggest difference between a soft fork and a hard fork is whether a new chain is generated. A hard fork generates a new chain, while a soft fork does not generate a new chain.