Читать книгу Cryptocurrency All-in-One For Dummies - Peter Kent, Kiana Danial - Страница 41

Sometimes when a group of developers disagrees with the direction a specific cryptocurrency is going, the members decide to go their own way and initiate a fork. Imagine an actual physical fork. It has one long handle, and then it divides into a bunch of branches. That’s exactly what happens in a cryptocurrency fork.

Some cryptocurrencies are implemented within open-source software. Each of these cryptocurrencies has its own protocol that everyone in the network should follow. Examples of such rule topics include the following:

 Block size

 Rewards that miners, harvesters, or other network participants get

 How fees are calculated

But because cryptocurrencies are essentially software projects, their development will never be fully finished. There’s always room for improvement. Crypto developers regularly push out updates to fix issues or to increase performance. Some of these improvements are small, but others fundamentally change the way the original cryptocurrency (which the developers fell in love with) works. Just as in any type of relationship, you either grow together or grow apart. When the disagreements among a group of developers or network participants intensify, they can choose to break up, create their own version of the protocol, and cause a potential heartbreak that requires years of therapy to get over. Okay, the last part doesn’t really happen.