As you all know that Satoshi created the Bitcoin white paper with a vision of democracy so as to allow everyone to participate in Bitcoin technology. Bitcoin is open source and we all have access to every bit of it in the same way. Also, this free access isn't limited to just participation, you can tinker or even change it completely.
Bitcoin is so much democratic in nature that anyone who doesn't like a fraction of it, can simply make a copy and create their own version with their own rules. The new version becomes a 'fork' and can even attempt to replace the older version. There are, however, different views regarding why do 'forks' take place? Some call it a simple way to subsidise their greed and some say that it's a necessity for innovation.
Overall There have been 105 instances of Bitcon fork and out of those 74 are active and the rest are just history.
Click here to know more about the statistical status of all Bitcoin forks till date.
Forks: A Greed or Innovation?
There is no straight answer to this question, however for many people, it seems that Bitcoin's design has some shortcomings such as its overall capacity for transactions. Or, it's safe to say that Bitcoin is rather very less in terms of supply. Only 21 Million for a worldwide population of more than 7.5 Billion.
As we know, different people have different perspective. There is a common human trait that 'everything doesn't please everyone'. Bitcoin is no different. It also doesn't get the appreciation of all.
Additionally, Greed is something that this human race commonly share. In terms of Bitcoin, it is interesting to note that greed had been a deciding factor while the major Bitcoin forks took place. Additionally every time a fork is implemented on Bitcoin, it is chanted that the new version of Bitcoin (aka the forked coin) would replace the original Bitcoin chain. But it never happened and would rather never going to happen because of the true patronage that Bitcoin boasts of.
Till date, there are only two notable hard forks of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold and neither has come closer to even challenge the dominance of Bitcoin. However, in the starting Bitcoin Cash got a bit of traction, but it fell deep in the same hole that it dig out for Bitcoin at the time of fork. Bitcoin Cash saw a rise in tensions among developers in 2018 and that culminating 2 new hard forks of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV and and Bitcoin ABC.
What will tarnish the hopes of Fork lovers that the combined market cap of BCH, BSV and XEC (Bitcoin ABC) is only about 1% of the total market of Bitcoin. Here we need not discuss about Bitcoin Gold as it even does get close to 0.1% of the total MCap of Bitcoin. If we consider all forks out of Bitcoin, they hardly reach 2% of the total MCap of Bitcoin.
Do you still believe that forks might be a utility in the progress of blockchain innovation. I highly doubt it as all of them promise only a duplicate or copy coin that just want to fulfill the ambitions of a Greedy crook or group.
With that being said, 'Innovation, IMO, is a subject of improvement and not an overall replacement. While the innovation is quite visible when Bitcoin implemented the lightning network, but the greed and high-handedness are easily visible in obstinate forks of Bitcoin'.
As always Thanks for Reading
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