SuperEx Education Series: Soft Forks / Hard Forks — Why Can a Single On-Chain Upgrade Impact the Entire Crypto Industry?

SuperEx_Media ✔️ · 2025-11-17T09:36:35Z

#Forks #Soft Forks #Hard Forks

Most of us aren’t strangers to the word “fork.” Any high-consensus, large-scale project will encounter forks as it matures — think BTC and ETH. And speaking of timing, here’s a fork headline from today: according to an official announcement, Binance will support the Ethereum (ETH) network upgrade and hard fork. To prepare for the upgrade and hard fork, Binance will perform maintenance on the ETH wallet at 14:00 on November 26, 2025 (UTC+8).

Some say: “The rules of a blockchain are written in code, but its future is decided by consensus. Every ‘fork’ is the inevitable result of the co-evolution of technology, consensus, and the ecosystem.” What does that mean? In short, while a blockchain’s underlying logic is deterministic, its development path is determined by consensus — and every fork occurs when differences arise around a technical or ecosystem upgrade.

All in all, forks tend to happen around various chain upgrades, especially after rapid evolution across L1s, L2s, and rollup ecosystems. Yet many still hold a surface-level understanding: is a fork just a technical update? A community vote? A price event? Or an ecosystem reshuffle?

In reality, it’s all of the above. Blockchains aren’t powerful because they “never change,” but because they can continually “self-evolve” via forking mechanisms. Today, we’ll explain soft and hard forks in the clearest, deepest, and most practical way.

https://news.superex.com/articles/16172.html

Why must blockchains “fork”? The industry’s most misunderstood question

Outsiders often view forks as “chaos” or “conflict,” but true blockchain participants know: forking is the lifeblood of the blockchain world.

In Web2, companies call the shots. In blockchains:

There’s no boss
No CEO
No central server
No one can force you to upgrade

Every chain is like a sovereign nation, and all nodes, miners, and validators are its “citizens.” To amend the law (chain rules), you need “social consensus,” and the forking mechanism is how this “nation” legitimately changes its rules.

Forks arise from four fundamental needs:

1) Performance improvements: throughput, fees, and latency never stop being issues

Whether BTC, ETH, or the fastest L2, performance isn’t static. Whenever users surge, you’ll see:

Insufficient TPS
Elevated gas fees
Block congestion
On-chain activity competing for resources

The community proposes upgrades that often redefine block formats, gas mechanics, or consensus parameters — making forks inevitable (and yes, disagreements over upgrade approaches). Performance upgrades are the most common driver of forks.

2) Security: the longer a chain lives, the more it must patch vulnerabilities

Blockchains aren’t “absolutely secure” — they become “more secure over time.” Early on, any chain may face:

Transaction-validation bugs
Timestamp issues
Consensus sync delays
State-calculation errors
Economic-incentive design flaws

Large chains undergo security upgrades almost annually, and fixing flaws often means changing old rules — thus requiring a fork.

3) New features: ecosystem expansion needs new rules

Ethereum’s journey from PoW → PoS and from EVM extensions to various scaling components is a textbook “feature-iteration-driven fork,” e.g.:

Extending virtual-machine capabilities
Adding new precompiles (e.g., ZK-related)
Supporting new rollup modes
Introducing entirely new execution or data-layer logic

Each new feature alters underlying rules, so you “upgrade the language” via a fork.

4) Economic-model adjustments: incentives are the soul of a blockchain

A chain isn’t only technology — it’s also economics, which must evolve:

Change inflation rate?
Modify the gas model?
Alter miner/validator rewards?
Introduce new burn mechanics?

Economic parameters directly affect fairness, security, and sustainability — another frequent reason to fork.

Bottom line: Forks aren’t chaos; they’re the core mechanism of blockchain evolution. Without forks, there is no future for blockchains.

Soft forks: a gentle, backward-compatible “gradual evolution”

A soft fork is a backward-compatible upgrade. In short: the new rules are stricter, but old nodes still accept new blocks. That’s the essence of a soft fork — no breaking old systems, no forcing everyone to upgrade immediately.

1) Why are soft forks compatible with old nodes?

One sentence: a soft fork narrows old rules rather than expanding them. For example:

Old rule: block size ≤ 1 MB
New rule: block size ≤ 0.9 MB

Old nodes still deem such blocks valid (they satisfy the old rule), while new nodes enforce the stricter limit. Result: old nodes do not reject new blocks.

Since old nodes don’t reject new blocks, the chain doesn’t split and everything runs smoothly — that’s the logic behind a “quiet” soft-fork upgrade.

2) Common soft-fork moves

Soft forks typically involve:

Adding stricter validation logic
Imposing extra constraints on transaction formats
Disabling certain operations
Introducing additional rules without confusing old parsers

In other words, soft forks “don’t disturb old logic” while enhancing the chain.

3) Why do major chains prefer soft forks?

Lowest community cost: not everyone must upgrade simultaneously; consensus remains intact.
Lowest risk: no two chains, no new coins, no mapping headaches.
User invisible: exchanges, wallets, staking, and apps keep running.
Ecosystem continuity: big chains avoid “splits” at all costs; soft forks enable the smoothest evolution.

Thus BTC, ETH, Solana, and many L2s default to soft-fork paths.

Hard forks: a non-backward-compatible “structural reset”

If a soft fork is “iOS 14 → 14.1,” a hard fork is “iOS 14 → iOS 18” — a full system remodel. New and old rules do not recognize each other, and nodes can’t mutually validate blocks.

Because they’re incompatible, the outcome is obvious: the chain splits into two versions.

1) Why can’t hard forks support old nodes?

Hard forks expand rules. For example:

Old rule: block size ≤ 1 MB
New rule: block size ≤ 2 MB

When a new node proposes a 1.8 MB block:

It’s valid to new nodes
It’s invalid to old nodes (>1 MB)
Old nodes reject it
Sync breaks immediately

Two chains then diverge:

One led by the new rules
One led by the old rules

That’s the essence of hard-fork chain splits.

2) Consequences — an industry-wide “seismic event”

Two independent chains
Two asset systems (two coins)
Split among nodes, miners, validators
Wallets, exchanges, and tooling must be rebuilt
Liquidity is divided
Narratives are reshaped

Serious? Absolutely. In this industry, a hard fork is a big event — not merely technical, but systemic.

3) When is a hard fork unavoidable?

Despite the cost, some scenarios demand it:

Rule-rewrite upgrades: architecture overhauls, VM changes, consensus transitions
Fundamental incompatibility: new features old rules can’t parse
Core economic redesign: e.g., radically new rewards or gas models
Irreconcilable ideology: communities part ways, each with its own chain

In short: a hard fork is the most thorough “rebirth” a blockchain can undergo.

System-level view: the fundamental differences

Block-validation rules differ:

Soft forks tighten rules; hard forks expand them.

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Impact on node ecosystems differs:

Soft fork → upgrade optional;
Hard fork → upgrade mandatory (or you’re on the old chain).

Impact on ecosystem development differs:

Soft fork = steady, continuous evolution;
Hard fork = rebuild the civilizational stack.

Neither is inherently “good” or “bad” — they fit different scenarios.

In the L1, L2, and rollup era, fork mechanics are structurally changing

With 2024–2025 ushering in multi-layered ecosystems, forking isn’t just a single-chain act — it spans cross-chain coordination.

1) Rollups upgrade far faster than L1s; soft forks become high-frequency

Rollups are the leading scaling path and behave like rapidly iterating app-chains — upgrades feel like Web2 software releases. Common patterns:

Frequent soft forks
Weekly updates
Constantly improving compression, data availability, proving systems

This “lightweight fork culture” is accelerating the crypto world’s iteration speed.

2) Major L1s prefer soft forks (to avoid political schisms)

The more mature the L1, the less it can stomach a hard fork:

Large market cap
Massive ecosystems
Rich DApp landscapes
Complex exchange integrations
The cost of a hard fork is simply too high

Hence L1s increasingly favor soft-fork, incremental upgrades.

3) AppChains fork more like Web2 product updates

AppChains are smaller and nimbler; their forks feel like “version bumps” without heavy consensus politics. Upgrades are more flexible, and even hard forks rarely pose systemic risk.

Soft/Hard fork trends: the industry is entering a “gentle-upgrade era”

Trend 1: Ethereum leads the soft-fork era, avoiding systemic splits

Post-PoS, ETH leans toward:

Modularity
Incremental upgrades
Soft-fork priority
Emphasis on ecosystem continuity
Hard forks only when absolutely necessary

Trend 2: Rollups become high-frequency iterators

As “upgradable application chains,” rollups upgrade more like auto-updating software — soft forks will be routine.

Trend 3: Hard forks serve as “ecosystem reboots” (non-mainstream chains)

Smaller, stalled, or struggling chains will rely more on hard forks to “start over.”

Trend 4: Regulation increasingly shapes fork paths

Expect cases like:

Hard forks driven by regulatory demands
Soft forks for privacy adjustments
Parameter tweaks for compliance

Chain evolution is no longer purely technical — it’s the intersection of regulation and engineering.

Trend 5: Forks become more automated, predictable, and low-cost

Infrastructure is maturing:

Automated upgrade tooling
Compatibility testing
State-migration tech
Decentralized governance processes

Forks will feel more like “routine maintenance,” not “major political events.”

Trend 6: Exchanges play an ever more critical role

In fork seasons:

Liquidity determines which chain users view as “main”
Exchanges shape the public’s main-chain perception
Forked coins’ circulation hinges on exchange support
User asset safety relies on exchange guarantees

Platforms like SuperEx will matter more than ever.

Conclusion: Forks aren’t chaos — they’re how blockchains evolve

Back to the original question: why do all chains need to fork? Because the magic of blockchains isn’t in “never changing,” but in “getting better without centralized decision-making.”