Fork vs Lightning network

[Furball808]

In case anyone is confused this is to differentiate what a fork is and what the lightning network is. It is important to note that both fork and lightning network are used to solve bitcoin blockchain's scalability issues. Scalability is the blockchain's capabilities to handle more complex work.

What is a Fork?

A fork happens whenever a community makes a change to the blockchain’s protocol, or basic set of rules. When this happens, the chain splits — producing a second blockchain that shares all of its history with the original, but is headed off in a new direction.

Some of the notable bitcoin forks that you may already have heard or came across with here in the forum are the following:

• SegWit
• Bitcoin Gold
  
• Bitcoin Cash

There are generally two types of fork. Soft Fork and Hard Fork.
Soft Fork: No new coins are created. It is backward-compatible meaning even with the new updates it can still work with the "older version". Even with a software update, the old nodes will still consider the new blocks as valid. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules, as opposed to a hard fork that requires all nodes to upgrade and agree on the new version.
Hard Fork: Unlike the soft fork, hard fork is no longer backward compatible. Basically with a hard fork, the blockchain splits into two. A hard fork now creates an entirely new cryptocurrency.

Can anyone do a fork? Yes technically but it needs a positive consensus from the community for it be widely used or successful.
Sources:
What is a fork?
Overview of bitcoin forks
Soft fork:What it is, How it works in cryptocurrency

What is The Lightning Network?

The Lightning Network is a second-layer network intended to solve the problem of slow transaction speeds and high costs on the Bitcoin blockchain by introducing off-chain transactions.

Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja proposed the lightning network in 2016. The layers on the bitcoin blockchain are to help solve the issues of the core layer. The first layer is the base blockchain. The second layer is the lightning network. There is also a third layer. Each added layer focusing on specific issues of the blockchain.

So basically a fork is a change in protocol while the lightning network is built on top of the base protocol.
Sources:
Lightning Network
Blockchain layers explained

[MusaMohamed]

Some of the notable bitcoin forks that you may already have heard or came across with here in the forum are the following:

• SegWit
• Bitcoin Gold
  
• Bitcoin Cash

There are many Bitcoin forks, and they are shit altcoins that want to abuse "forking" for creating their useless scam altcoins.
How Many Bitcoin Forks Are There? You will be surprised!!!

Altcoins are useless, low value or even zero value and if altcoin teams try to use "Bitcoin" and "Fork" as one of their most attractive things for scamming, these "fork" projects are very dangerous to spend your money for any amount of such useless coins.

Good altcoin projects don't need to use anything like "Bitcoin" and "fork" for advertising their projects.

[_act_]

Some of the notable bitcoin forks that you may already have heard or came across with here in the forum are the following:

• SegWit
• Bitcoin Gold
  
• Bitcoin Cash

This is confusing, do not list soft fork and hard fork together. Those hard fork coins are not bitcoin and they are not part of bitcoin but they are altcoins.

Segwit is a soft fork.

Those like bitcoin cash, bitcoin gold and bitcoin diamond are different coins entirely, listing them with soft fork like segwit is not right at all and it can confuse people. You did not even mention them as examples in both the soft and hard fork.

[Lakai01]

[...]
Those like bitcoin cash, bitcoin gold and bitcoin diamond are different coins entirely, listing them with soft fork like segwit is not right at all and it can confuse people. You did not even mention them as examples in both the soft and hard fork.

I completely agree with you here. It is wrong to mention Segwit in the same breath as Bitcoin Cash, as this gives a completely false impression, especially to newcomers.

It even goes so far as to say that Bitcoin Cash (or Diamond, or ...) are their own blockchains that have nothing in common with classic Bitcoin since the fork—except for the name reference and the past.

It would be much better to explain the difference between a soft fork and a hard fork and give examples, then the impact of each fork will become clear relatively quickly.

[d5000]

It is important to note that both fork and lightning network are used to solve bitcoin blockchain's scalability issues.

Lol, no. That's a candidate for the most hilarious nonsense comparison in the history of Bitcointalk.

Scalability issues can't be "solved" by a "fork". They can be solved with new features, for example features enabling second layers.

And no, BCash (even if it's a "fork" from Bitcoin) isn't improving "scalability" either. BCash only increases the block size, but the real bottlenecks for scalability are the nodes' bandwidth and CPU/GPU/memory usage. If you increase the block size, you also increase the cost to run a node. Only if you find a way that not all transactions have to be stored and transmitted by all nodes (layer-2) then you can talk about real scalability.

BCash is also an independent currency and does not affect Bitcoin's scalability at all.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Thought about reporting the opening post as low-quality trash but instead leaving it be.
Hilariously inaccurate, it serves as a good example of WHY one needs to know what they are talking about before even thinking about writing a technical 'what is' post..     

[ABCbits]

I've tagged OP[1], but he decided to create another shitpost. So i might as well poke his statement.

It is important to note that both fork and lightning network are used to solve bitcoin blockchain's scalability issues.

What is a Fork?

A fork happens whenever a community makes a change to the blockchain’s protocol, or basic set of rules. When this happens, the chain splits — producing a second blockchain that shares all of its history with the original, but is headed off in a new direction.

2 conflicting statement, where 2nd statement prove fork isn't always about solving scalability issues.

Hard Fork: Unlike the soft fork, hard fork is no longer backward compatible. Basically with a hard fork, the blockchain splits into two. A hard fork now creates an entirely new cryptocurrency.

Hard fork usually doesn't create new coin, unless the community can't agree decide to split. For example, BCH had hard fork that raise block size from 8MB to 32MB. But it doesn't lead to new coin being created.

Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja proposed the lightning network in 2016.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150228162703/http://lightning.network/ prove LN introduced by them in 2015.

And no, BCash (even if it's a "fork" from Bitcoin) isn't improving "scalability" either. BCash only increases the block size, but the real bottlenecks for scalability are the nodes' bandwidth and CPU/GPU/memory usage. If you increase the block size, you also increase the cost to run a node. Only if you find a way that not all transactions have to be stored and transmitted by all nodes (layer-2) then you can talk about real scalability.

While theoretically it's possible to use GPU, are there any full node software that actually use GPU for computing purpose (not mining)?

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5482297.msg66088782#msg66088782

[Cookdata]

Hard fork usually doesn't create new coin, unless the community can't agree decide to split. For example, BCH had hard fork that raise block size from 8MB to 32MB. But it doesn't lead to new coin being created.

Is BCH not a new coin as a result of chain split after the community altercations?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Hard fork usually doesn't create new coin, unless the community can't agree decide to split. For example, BCH had hard fork that raise block size from 8MB to 32MB. But it doesn't lead to new coin being created.

Is BCH not a new coin as a result of chain split after the community altercations?

Yes, the origninal BCH coin was the result of an intentional hard fork away from BTC done by folks outside of the Core dev group. Same as with all altcoins, from day-1 it's creator wanted a new coin and more importantly a new chain they could pre-mine the hell out of.

ABC's point was that under certain circumstances (in this case, the sole creator and largest holder of BCH wanting to change it)  there was no opposition so the coin & chain remained the same despite the hard fork.

[Karl_3000]

Hard fork usually doesn't create new coin, unless the community can't agree decide to split. For example, BCH had hard fork that raise block size from 8MB to 32MB. But it doesn't lead to new coin being created.

Is BCH not a new coin as a result of chain split after the community altercations?

There should be a chain split in a hard fork, but that should be if there is a consensus. With bitcoin cash (BCH), there was no consensus, but Bitcoin Cash developers moved to create another coin themselves, but bitcoin is still bitcoin.

Assuming if BCH receive up to 70% of support that signals for the upgrade instead of the 37% that it had, there will be a chain split. The old chain which is still the one bitcoin is using now will be left for the new one and the new coin will be BCH. It may not be called BTC but remain as BTC but there will be a chain split and a new coin. BCH is not a new coin, it supposed not to be created because there was no consensus.

If there is a chain split, BCH of today supposed to be BTC as the old chain would be left, but no new coin created but BCH which is an altcoin that was created after no consensus.

But it is possible that if there was more support for BCH and there was chain split and new bitcoin was created, some miners and nodes may continue to support the old bitcoin just like what happened to ETH which was newly created after an upgrade while some miners and nodes stayed on the old chain and named the old ETH as ETHW (old ETH). I think it happened with ethereum classic and ETH. I just use the altcoins as an example because no upgrade that I know about bitcoin that caused chain split.

With hard fork, bitcoin will have to have a chain split, making it non-backward compatible, new blockchain will be created, nodes have to upgrade and move to the new chain.

Soft fork is backward compatible and no chain split is the difference it has with hard fork.

Do not let BCH articles you see online to confuse you, there was no new coin (no new bitcoin) that was created.

[Cookdata]

Hard fork usually doesn't create new coin, unless the community can't agree decide to split. For example, BCH had hard fork that raise block size from 8MB to 32MB. But it doesn't lead to new coin being created.

Is BCH not a new coin as a result of chain split after the community altercations?

Yes, the origninal BCH coin was the result of an intentional hard fork away from BTC done by folks outside of the Core dev group. Same as with all altcoins, from day-1 it's creator wanted a new coin and more importantly a new chain they could pre-mine the hell out of.

ABC's point was that under certain circumstances (in this case, the sole creator and largest holder of BCH wanting to change it)  there was no opposition so the coin & chain remained the same despite the hard fork.

I get his point now. It was the increased of 1mb-8mb that caused the initial chain split with issuance of BCH.

8mb to 32 mb was another hard fork entirely and was a consensus community agreement.