Soft Fork

A soft fork is a type of blockchain fork that is backward-compatible with previous versions of the software. In other words, it is a protocol update that does not result in a permanent split of the blockchain. Instead, the new rules that are introduced in the soft fork are more restrictive than the old rules, and all nodes that follow the old rules will still recognize the blocks that are produced by the nodes that have upgraded to the new rules.

Examples

• The implementation of Segregated Witness (SegWit) on the Bitcoin network.
• The introduction of BIP66.

Soft forks are generally considered to be less contentious than hard forks, because they do not require all nodes to upgrade their software. However, they can still cause some disruption, because nodes that do not upgrade to the new rules may not be able to validate some of the new transactions that are included in the blocks that are produced by upgraded nodes.

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