Can anyone explain to me Hard Fork in Blockchain ?

Question

I have seen an article about it but the way of explaining was not going in my part of my brain-concept-region easily.

Answer 1

Think of a hard fork as updated code.

When someone says "fork" in a blockchain, they are talking about one that is not centralized.

Recall -> A blockchain is a structure; similiar to a linked list, except nodes are linked via a hash and previous hash. It is immutable and append-only.

When we talk about it being 'not centralized', multiple people can have the blockchain.
Problems come when you try to define 'so whose blockchain is the "real" one'? Not everyones blockchain will be the same.

As an example, Bitcoin says the longest chain is the "real" one.
The thing is, people are often competing with one another to try to append to the chain. A fork in this case can occur when two people have the same length chain. In order to determine the longest length, you simply wait till one is longer.

A hard fork is saying the protocol (code) changed. Some people may build off of the old code instead of the new code.

So a fork is like a new branch to a tree, if you drew out the blockchain as a tree.

Answer 2

Rrestoring faith thanks man