Why no forks these days?

[chainganginc]

Forking the Bitcoin network is a tried and tested attempt to create a coin to rival
Bitcoin which has proven to be futile. All previous forked coin performances and
acceptance has shown the trust lies with the project with the 100% security performance.

Forking the Bitcoin network now would be seen as a folly!

Or more like an attempt to get "free money". Developers and whales benefitted massively from forks. It was like a "double-spend", but with coins on different blockchain networks. Some exchanges didn't list all of the forks (especially the low-valued ones), marking the end of craze.

Right now, Bitcoin Cash is the only fork that's still afloat. But if it doesn't innovate, it's going to be left behind in the dust. The competition is fierce with many smart contract platforms gaining traction. There are rumors there's going to be a BCH spot ETF, but I doubt institutional investors are going to show interest in it. I'm certain Bitcoin will outlive most of the "shitcoins". Just you wait and see.

Right Bitcoin Cash left the door open I agree Bitcoin will probably outlive. Most are just copycats not enough innovation beyond them. I guess Bitcoin Cash had the backing the liquidity to last. Litecoin is still around but it doesn't innovate. Litecoin is marketed as the silver to the gold, Bitcoin Cash is marketed as the faster cash version of Bitcoin. I don't think Bitcoin Cash is fast enough and people don't like the idea of it being the real Bitcoin.

[Synchronice]

When you read old threads, you will hear of many soft forks and including a few hard forks that gave birth to Bitcoin Cash , Bitcoin gold, Bitcoin SV. The last one should be BSV in 2018.
What happened differently  that there are no threats or signs of forking?

That's a very good question. There aren't many forks these days because first of all, it should have a reason. When you make a fork, what change do you make? You have to make a significant change for the betterment. Besides significant change, you have to gain the support of the people and the developers, which is the hardest job. Your fork needs to gain support, the attention of people, it needs to become popular. How possible is that? Especially when Bitcoin is the number one crypto currency with significantly higher market cap then the other altcoins? Even the 2nd one? Also, how many successful Bitcoin forks do we know? BCH? And look at critics of BCH too. BSV is a scam token ranked at 112th on coinmarketcap.

[betswift]

When you read old threads, you will hear of many soft forks and including a few hard forks that gave birth to Bitcoin Cash , Bitcoin gold, Bitcoin SV. The last one should be BSV in 2018.
What happened differently  that there are no threats or signs of forking?

That's a very good question. There aren't many forks these days because first of all, it should have a reason. When you make a fork, what change do you make? You have to make a significant change for the betterment. Besides significant change, you have to gain the support of the people and the developers, which is the hardest job. Your fork needs to gain support, the attention of people, it needs to become popular. How possible is that? Especially when Bitcoin is the number one crypto currency with significantly higher market cap then the other altcoins? Even the 2nd one? Also, how many successful Bitcoin forks do we know? BCH? And look at critics of BCH too. BSV is a scam token ranked at 112th on coinmarketcap.

If you want it - you need a capital and expertise from around any sphere, basically, and people usually don't have such capital (fortunately or not, that's a good question too ).

[pancelot]

When you read old threads, you will hear of many soft forks and including a few hard forks that gave birth to Bitcoin Cash , Bitcoin gold, Bitcoin SV. The last one should be BSV in 2018.
What happened differently  that there are no threats or signs of forking?

In my opinion, it's not that forks are gone, but that the costs are now relatively too high compared to the potential benefits. It used to be easy—creating a new chain, swapping listings, and everything could be done for free. Today, the Bitcoin ecosystem is much more complex, with currency exchanges and a more robust community. So, it's natural that most developers prefer to build on top of Bitcoin (Lightning, Ordinals, Runes) rather than waste energy creating forks with the potential for greater losses.

[buwaytress]

Not trying to troll or anything, but if you know someone who'll pay a lot of money to create a Bitcoin fork for them, send them my way? I know anyone can do it, but people with a lot of money tend to pay all that money to someone else who'll do it. If they're looking for fame or anything else other than self-vanity, though, I'm afraid they'll be disappointed.

[el kaka22]

Forks were seen as trend once upon a time, not anymore, same as NFT's which were seen as trend, and not anymore, same as Play2Earn games, trend, not anymore. I can repeat this a million times. Sometimes things are trending and they get all the attention, and then they end up with losses and not anymore afterwards. This is the only time to focus on it and because of that, we are not going to get any good returns.

You have to realize, crypto is a very trend oriented place aside from the very top, sure bitcoin and ethereum and what not will stay at the top, but outside of top 20 changes all the time, and that is based on trends and whatever is the trend at the time, happens to be the case. This is why the best way to move forward would be ignoring trends after they are done.

[dunfida]

Forks were seen as trend once upon a time, not anymore, same as NFT's which were seen as trend, and not anymore, same as Play2Earn games, trend, not anymore. I can repeat this a million times. Sometimes things are trending and they get all the attention, and then they end up with losses and not anymore afterwards. This is the only time to focus on it and because of that, we are not going to get any good returns.

You have to realize, crypto is a very trend oriented place aside from the very top, sure bitcoin and ethereum and what not will stay at the top, but outside of top 20 changes all the time, and that is based on trends and whatever is the trend at the time, happens to be the case. This is why the best way to move forward would be ignoring trends after they are done.

That's very true the crypto space moves on trends faster than most industries first it was forks then ICOs, then NFTs, then play2earn and each one had a huge hype cycle before fading out leaving behind mostly losses for late comers the pattern repeats again and again.

Outside of bitcoin ethereum and maybe a handful of strong projects everything else is heavily trend driven people jump in when hype is high and abandon it when attention shifts the top 20 today won’t look the same in 5 years because new trends will come and go.
That’s why chasing hype rarely works by the time the average person hears about a trend it’s usually already too late the smarter play is focusing on solid long term assets and ignoring the noise once the hype cools off in the end only projects with real utility and staying power survive while trends fade away.

[Pablo-wood]

When you read old threads, you will hear of many soft forks and including a few hard forks that gave birth to Bitcoin Cash , Bitcoin gold, Bitcoin SV. The last one should be BSV in 2018.
What happened differently  that there are no threats or signs of forking?

I think block size war is a contributing factor. If we account for all the contentious hard forks between 2015 and 2018, we will can trace vast majority to disagreement, particularly the case of block size limit. 


To answer the question "What happened differently" I will simply say the Bitcoin ecosystem matured. The main tensions that caused forks have cooled off, and Bitcoin’s development has shifted toward incremental, backward-compatible upgrades, reducing the threat of contentious splits.

[OcTradism]

I think block size war is a contributing factor. If we account for all the contentious hard forks between 2015 and 2018, we will can trace vast majority to disagreement, particularly the case of block size limit. 


To answer the question "What happened differently" I will simply say the Bitcoin ecosystem matured. The main tensions that caused forks have cooled off, and Bitcoin’s development has shifted toward incremental, backward-compatible upgrades, reducing the threat of contentious splits.

Disagreement is part of manipulation game if you notice what happened with Taproot upgrade in the last market cycle too. It was less severe than Segwit upgrade in 2017 but basically market manipulation game is the same.

If upgrade on Bitcoin protocol can be voted, aggreed easily and in short time, it will not cause any uncertainty in the market and people will not feel either panic or hyped. Market makers know how to trigger unstable emotion and weak psychology of market participants in order to accumulate cheap coins before they boost the price up and take profit in distribution phase.

During manipulation time, there are scammers who take advantage of chaotic time in order to create forks and steal bitcoins from unknowledgeable bitcoin owners.

[jackpotmaster]

Every holder of Bitcoin could grab their other coins too which is crazyyy like imagine how much Satoshi has in just the shitcoins that's gotta be a lot of dough. I'm sure someone has figured what that bitcoin amount is! I just said bitcoin amount instead of dollar amount  

20% more Bitcoin was achievable from the largest dozen or so.  In theory if you managed to nail the high trading point of each of them more would be possible, but there were people who actually achieved a 20% gain.

I think it was even more if you were lucky with the timing, there were many forks at the time and a few of them had fair values like 5-10% of Bitcoin.

Forks and most altcoins have damaged the perception and adoption of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, there is no way to go around this fact.

I'm doubtful.  I think they pulled away a good number of idiots and fraudsters that otherwise would have been a greater nuisance in Bitcoin and depleted the funds of some fairly bad actors.  It's true that bitcoin sometimes gets blamed for stupidity in other blockchains but at least you can so "no, that was poocoin, not Bitcoin"-- which is a better situation than the same bullshit having happened in Bitcoin.

Question is did the benefits exceed the harms, I'm not sure.  But I do know that people having the freedom to actualize their beliefs (however stupid they are) is a fundamental good.  The same freedom that lets dumbass altcoins exist is what makes it possible for Bitcoin to exist.  I think we should give them some benefit of doubt.

Perhaps, and I do agree but I was kinda referring to other people. There were people that fell for this scam, thinking that they are the real Bitcoin, a better Bitcoin or even the future Bitcoin. I can't blame a large amount of population that isn't that proficient with technology and scams. While it is technically their fault, they are victims too of scammer Ver and similar people. Were it not for their kind, they would probably not have made such an error. I don't think that random forks caused as much damage as Bitcoin Cash and SV because they didn't have authorities that promote them heavily.

[tread93]

Every holder of Bitcoin could grab their other coins too which is crazyyy like imagine how much Satoshi has in just the shitcoins that's gotta be a lot of dough. I'm sure someone has figured what that bitcoin amount is! I just said bitcoin amount instead of dollar amount  

20% more Bitcoin was achievable from the largest dozen or so.  In theory if you managed to nail the high trading point of each of them more would be possible, but there were people who actually achieved a 20% gain.

I think it was even more if you were lucky with the timing, there were many forks at the time and a few of them had fair values like 5-10% of Bitcoin.

Forks and most altcoins have damaged the perception and adoption of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, there is no way to go around this fact.

I'm doubtful.  I think they pulled away a good number of idiots and fraudsters that otherwise would have been a greater nuisance in Bitcoin and depleted the funds of some fairly bad actors.  It's true that bitcoin sometimes gets blamed for stupidity in other blockchains but at least you can so "no, that was poocoin, not Bitcoin"-- which is a better situation than the same bullshit having happened in Bitcoin.

Question is did the benefits exceed the harms, I'm not sure.  But I do know that people having the freedom to actualize their beliefs (however stupid they are) is a fundamental good.  The same freedom that lets dumbass altcoins exist is what makes it possible for Bitcoin to exist.  I think we should give them some benefit of doubt.

Perhaps, and I do agree but I was kinda referring to other people. There were people that fell for this scam, thinking that they are the real Bitcoin, a better Bitcoin or even the future Bitcoin. I can't blame a large amount of population that isn't that proficient with technology and scams. While it is technically their fault, they are victims too of scammer Ver and similar people. Were it not for their kind, they would probably not have made such an error. I don't think that random forks caused as much damage as Bitcoin Cash and SV because they didn't have authorities that promote them heavily.

BSV craze was nuts. Craig wright crashed bitcoin down to like 8k or something crazy like that. I wish I sold my house and capitalized on that as basically everyone wishes lol.  That was just a short time ago too, pretty wild!

[Abiky]

I think block size war is a contributing factor. If we account for all the contentious hard forks between 2015 and 2018, we will can trace vast majority to disagreement, particularly the case of block size limit. 


To answer the question "What happened differently" I will simply say the Bitcoin ecosystem matured. The main tensions that caused forks have cooled off, and Bitcoin’s development has shifted toward incremental, backward-compatible upgrades, reducing the threat of contentious splits.

Who's to say another contentious fork will appear if Bitcoin gets congested again? A few years ago, the Ordinals hype caused network fees to rise towards "uncomfortable" levels. Many expressed their disagreement with it, raising the possibility of Bitcoin getting "forked" again. Bitcoin Knox could've turned into a new chain, if successful. The lead developer (Luke Dashjr) proposed censoring Ordinals inscriptions on-chain via the node software. Glad it didn't work out, otherwise, the community would've been going against Bitcoin's censorship-resistant ideals.

While the odds of a new fork happening now are slim, anything is possible in the future. Money talks, so everything will depend on how interested investors and the community are to make a fork happen. One would hope, exchanges honor customers' funds on forked chains for "free money". Although, I don't think they're legally obligated to do so. Just my two sats.

[OcTradism]

Who's to say another contentious fork will appear if Bitcoin gets congested again? A few years ago, the Ordinals hype caused network fees to rise towards "uncomfortable" levels. Many expressed their disagreement with it, raising the possibility of Bitcoin getting "forked" again. Bitcoin Knox could've turned into a new chain, if successful. The lead developer (Luke Dashjr) proposed censoring Ordinals inscriptions on-chain via the node software. Glad it didn't work out, otherwise, the community would've been going against Bitcoin's censorship-resistant ideals.

Bitcoin blockchain ideallys is no censorship (censorship-resistant) and if the proposal of Luke Dashjr was agreed and supported by Bitcoin community, it turns the blockchain to censor blockchain. Somewhat it is similar to attempts from MARA and F2Pool mining pools to censor Bitcoin transactions years ago and fortunately they failed.

Fifteen OFAC-sanctioned transactions missing from blocks.
Marathon says its mining pool will stop censoring transactions following bitcoin community outcry.

[pooya87]

proposed censoring Ordinals inscriptions on-chain via the node software. Glad it didn't work out, otherwise, the community would've been going against Bitcoin's censorship-resistant ideals.

Are people still stuck on this thing?!

Preventing abuse of the protocol and not relaying transactions that are exploiting it is not called censorship. If it were then bitcoin would have always been censored because from very early days we introduced standard rules that have been preventing a large number of abusive usage of Bitcoin and are still not relaying a lot of non-standard transactions.

[Synchronice]

If you want it - you need a capital and expertise from around any sphere, basically, and people usually don't have such capital (fortunately or not, that's a good question too ).

That's true but besides that everything has its time. Sometimes some things are popular, then they get forgotten and then they become popular again. Sometimes absolutely a different thing becomes popular and so on, the cycle continues. NFTs will boom again, ICOs might boom again too.

proposed censoring Ordinals inscriptions on-chain via the node software. Glad it didn't work out, otherwise, the community would've been going against Bitcoin's censorship-resistant ideals.

Are people still stuck on this thing?!

Preventing abuse of the protocol and not relaying transactions that are exploiting it is not called censorship. If it were then bitcoin would have always been censored because from very early days we introduced standard rules that have been preventing a large number of abusive usage of Bitcoin and are still not relaying a lot of non-standard transactions.

I completely agree with pooya87 here. It's not a censorship to exploit something that ruins the whole network. We, humans have free will but that doesn't really translate into absolutely free will. You have no right to take someone else's life despite the fact that you have a free will of that. Things don't work that way and it's better to cut out the poison before it reaches the heart, even in a completely free world.

[DigitalPsyche]

When you read old threads, you will hear of many soft forks and including a few hard forks that gave birth to Bitcoin Cash , Bitcoin gold, Bitcoin SV. The last one should be BSV in 2018.
What happened differently  that there are no threats or signs of forking?

Everyone knows that if they are going to hard fork bitcoin, no one will actually use it. We already have too many shitcoins.