The listed name of bitcoin’s inventor is Satoshi Nakamoto in the white paper. This white paper was published to make people aware of the functionality and technology used by Satoshi Nakamoto in bitcoin.
Hard forks are a very exciting event in any cryptocurrency community as it decides the future of a digital currency network. Bitcoin was the digital currency to be forked by miners and other users of this digital currency network. Here listed is a complete timeline of bitcoin hard forks, so let’s have a deep dive into the notion of bitcoin hard forks.
Key Takeaways!
Hard forks in the cryptocurrency community refer to a drastic change in a digital currency’s blockchain protocol. Hard forks create two pathways of blockchain, first the original one and second pathway conferring protocols of freshly created version.
In terms of bitcoin, hard forks result in changes in software solicitation alongside mining protocols. For example, suppose any of the users shift to new flanged software. In that case, the software denies every possible transaction executed with the original version, resulting in a new blockchain branch.
Bitcoin hard forks are the mere process that has led to numerous digital currencies having bitcoin as the prefix. Some of the bitcoin hard forks are even leading in the cryptocurrency marketplace.
Bitcoin XT acquired the attention of bitcoin users at the first instance, and later many bitcoin forks arrived. The hard for not having bitcoin as its prefix is serrated witness.
Out of all the bitcoin hard forks, bitcoin cash is leading in the cryptocurrency market. In terms of market cap, bitcoin cash appears at the eleventh spot.
A timeline of bitcoin hard forks!
Bitcoin XT
There were a few hard forks in the bitcoin network before bitcoin XT, but as discussed above, bitcoin XT was the first to grab bitcoin users’ attention. The developer of this bitcoin hard fork is Mike Hearn, and he released this bitcoin hard fork at the time of the Ethereum release. Bitcoin XT had the goal of revolutionizing the technology and scalability of the original bitcoin network. Some highlighting features present in this hard fork were the massive number of transactions in one second and the blockchain’s massive size of blocks.
Undeniably, bitcoin XT was built on a proper plan to improve the bitcoin network’s scalability by increasing the block size. As a result, it acquired a handsome number of nodes in the first place. But when bitcoin XT could not keep the users engaged, people started to shift to the original network of bitcoin. As a result, Bitcoin XT was suspended by the users, and even the official website of this bitcoin hard fork is devoid of proper functionality.
Bitcoin Classic!
Bitcoin users and community members of this cryptocurrency liked the idea of increasing bitcoin’s block size to improve its scalability and transaction speed. So, to increase the block size and transaction speed on the bitcoin network, some community members developed another hard fork named bitcoin classic.
Bitcoin XT wanted to bring some drastic changes in the bitcoin network; conversely, the bitcoin classic proposed gradual changes by increasing the block size to 2 megabytes. As a result, Bitcoin classic correspondingly acquired traction from bitcoin users at first, and the number of nodes operating on this cryptocurrency network was 2000. But later, bitcoin classic also failed as people could not engage with this network.
Bitcoin Cash!
Before bitcoin cash, bitcoin was hard forked two times by the community members. Bitcoin Unlimited and segregated witness were two unsuccessful bitcoin hard forks. As discussed above, out of all Bitcoin hard forks, bitcoin cash is currently the most successful. Bitcoin cash leads the market by maintaining the eleventh spot in terms of market cap. Bitcoin gold is correspondingly one of the popular hard forks.
The above-listed portion describes a detailed timeline of bitcoin’s hard forks.