Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public di ...

forks are defined variantly as changes in the protocol of the

bitcoin network The bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer payment network that operates on a cryptographic protocol. Users send and receive bitcoins, the units of currency, by broadcasting digitally-signed messages to the network using bitcoin cryptocurrenc ...

or as the situations that occur "when two or more blocks have the same block height". A fork influences the validity of the

rules Rule or ruling may refer to: Education * Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia Human activity * The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power * Business rule, a rule pert ...

. Forks are typically conducted in order to add new features to a blockchain, to reverse the effects of hacking or catastrophic

bugs Bugs may refer to: * Plural of bug Arts, entertainment and media Fictional characters * Bugs Bunny, a character * Bugs Meany, a character in the ''Encyclopedia Brown'' books Films * ''Bugs'' (2003 film), a science-fiction-horror film * ''Bugs ...

. Forks require consensus to be resolved or else a permanent split emerges.

Forks of the client software

The following are

forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods eit ...

of the

software client In computing, a client is a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server as part of the client–server model of computer networks. The server is often (but not always) on another computer system, i ...

for the

: ; Bitcoin XT: A fork initiated by Mike Hearn. The current reference implementation for bitcoin contains a computational