Chapter 11. Bitcoin upgrades
This chapter covers
- Understanding hard forks and soft forks
- Upgrading Bitcoin safely
- Understanding that users make the rules
To understand this chapter, you should be comfortable with concepts like the blockchain (chapter 6), proof of work (chapter 7), and the peer-to-peer network (chapter 8). If you had difficulties with those chapters, I suggest you revisit them before continuing with this chapter. Of course, you can also just try to read on anyway.
Bitcoin’s consensus rules can change in two ways: via either a soft fork or via a hard fork. These two types of changes are fundamentally different. In “Bitcoin forks,” you’ll learn about the differences between hard and soft forks and about what happens when different ...
Get Grokking Bitcoin now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
