Hey guys, I'm new to cryptocurrencies , I don't know much about Fork thing? What is Forking and how does it affect any crypto currency?
well you know what a blockchain is, right? It is a chain of blocks. Every new block is a cryptographically consistent continuation of the previous blocks. In that way, an attacker who would want to change a transaction say 3 blocks deep, would need to possess computational power to replace those 3 blocks with new (his own, fake) 3 blocks, but in a cryptographically consistent way. It is very hard and requires unbelievable computing power (all the computing power that is currently devoted in the whole world to finding new blocks can find ONE block in 10 minutes on average).
Hard fork is when the protocol is changed in such a way that new blocks don't follow the previous specification and would be normally rejected by the network. It requires that everybody changes their sofware (miners, wallets etc.) to follow the new protocol and be able to recognize new block format.
But sometimes some network participants say "hey, I don't want to follow new protocol". They don't upgrade their software and continue mining the previous format of blocks. In that way a hard fork is a reason for two separate blockchains to exist from that moment on. Usually one of the blockchains is discontinued because economically it doesn't make sense to mine it anymore.
But sometimes after a hard fork two coins coexist - an old coin on an old blockchain and a new coin on a new blockchain. It was the case with Ethereum Classic (old coin) and hard-forked Ethereum (new coin), with Bitcoin Cash (new coin) and Bitcoin (old coin) etc.
I don't know if it was clear. If not - ask. The topic is quite complex and there is nowhere to start explaining - it is either too in-depth or too shallow. I hope I was in the middle somewhere and that it was helpful.
