Soft Fork
A backward-compatible blockchain upgrade where new rules are stricter than old rules.
In-Depth Explanation
Soft forks tighten validation rules—old nodes still see new blocks as valid, even if they don't enforce new rules. This allows gradual adoption without chain splits. Bitcoin's SegWit was a soft fork. Soft forks are less disruptive than hard forks but constrained in what changes they can make.
Related Terms
Hard Fork
A blockchain protocol change that's not backward-compatible, potentially splitting the network into two separate chains.
Consensus Mechanism
The method by which a blockchain network agrees on the current state of the ledger and validates new transactions.
Blockchain
A distributed, immutable ledger that records transactions across a network of computers using cryptographic linking.
More in Infrastructure
View all →Gas Fees
Transaction fees paid to validators/miners for executing operations on a blockchain.
Gwei
A denomination of Ether equal to one billionth of an ETH, commonly used to express gas prices.
Layer 2
L2Scaling solutions built on top of a base blockchain (L1) that process transactions off-chain while inheriting L1 security.
Layer 1
L1The base blockchain that provides security and consensus, such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Solana.