soft fork [English]

Syndetic Relationships

InterPARES Definition

No definition in earlier IP projects. ITrust definition not yet developed.

Other Definitions

  • Bitcoin Developer Glossary 2017 (†791 s.v. "soft fork"): A softfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognize the new blocks as valid, a softfork is backward-compatible.
  • BlockchainHub Glossary (†807 s.v. "Softfork"): A softfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognize the new blocks as valid, a softfork is backward-compatible. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules.
  • Scaling Bitcoin [2017] (†845 s.v. "Softfork"): A softfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognise the new blocks as valid, a softfork is backward-compatible. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules.

Citations

  • Amsel 2016 (†829 para.2): A soft fork is an optional flag that miners can elect to run on their node. The suggested fork is to allow breathing room only (to quote Jeff) to prevent any DAO contract, including child DAOs, from reducing their ether balance. This buys time for a real solution before more damage can be done by this or other exploits. (†2164)
  • Scaling Bitcoin [2017] (†845 s.v. "Unilateral softfork"): Soft forks are a feature of Bitcoin. Moreover, soft forks can be enforced by miners unilaterally, without others consent. That's because soft forks make rules more strict/add new rules, and these rules are enforced by miners. (†2274)
  • Smith & Atlas 2016. (†830 s.v. "introduction"): A soft consensus fork occurs when blocks that would have previously been considered valid are now invalid. Upgrading software during a consensus soft fork is forever optional to a Bitcoin user, miner or exchanger, with the following caveats: · If the soft fork introduces a new feature that you want to use as either the sender or recipient, you must upgrade in order to use it. · At least 51% of miners must upgrade to adopt the soft fork; otherwise, it will forever appear as the shortest chain and get orphaned by the network. · Refusal to accept the soft fork can reduce your security. As you would normally consider soft forked transactions invalid, Bitcoin developers use various tricks to make these transactions appear valid to you while reducing your client’s capacity to process exactly why they are valid. See “Risks of Intentional Soft Consensus Forks” below. (†2166)