Hard Fork

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A hard fork is a change to a cryptocurrency protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, and therefore requires all users / software to upgrade. It could be any alteration to a coin which changes the block structure (including block hash), difficulty rules, or increases the set of valid transactions. You can think of a hard fork as a change of rules.

The Steem Blockchain has an innovative Witness-based system that allows improvements to be made to the protocol more rapidly than other blockchain protocols. All that is necessary for a Steem hardfork is for the top 20 witnesses, who are chosen by the users, to adopt the changes based on their assessment that the code is bug-free and does not pose a threat to the security of the blockchain.

Unlike a softfork, a hardfork is not backward-compatible: unupdated nodes will not recognise the new blocks as valid.


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