Fork on cryptocurrencies is based on forking the blockchain. It is also often referred to as a hard fork.

A fork happens on cryptocurrencies when two blocks are forked at approximately the same time and it is impossible to tell which blockchain is dominant. As more blocks are discovered, the longer chain becomes the main chain, and the shorter chain is "orphaned", i.e. mining pools stop mining it.

Forks are also done intentionally to introduce new features to the system. A fork establishes a completely new rule, incompatible with the old software. As a result, you have to update the software (client) to be able to use the system.

It may happen that some miners will not accept the changes and will stay with the old chain, while the rest will mine the new chain. Then we are dealing with a split of the network and the creation of a new cryptocurrency. An example illustrating such a situation is a fork on Ethereum (ETH) and the creation of Ethereum Classic (ETC).

Forks can also be done for purely economic purposes, a great example of which is a fork in Bitcoin resulting in Bitcoin Gold. The change was not innovative, it was to favor GPU (graphics card) miners over ASIC miners. The originators of BTG decided to leverage the popularity and huge customer base of Bitcoin to create their own cryptocurrency.

A soft fork is simply a system update that is customarily referred to as a fork. The name has become accepted among the cryptocurrency community and is used to describe protocol changes that do not require network sharing. Furthermore, making changes does not require an update because the system is backwards compatible.

Explain the difference between a hard fork and a soft fork