---
ID: 1564
post_title: A Future Friendly Fork
author: Zooko Wilcox
post_excerpt: ""
layout: post
permalink: >
  https://blog.z.cash/future-friendly-fork/
published: true
post_date: 2017-01-11 00:00:00
---
<p><em>See also a related post:</em> <a class="reference external" href="/consensual-currency/">Consensual Currency</a>.</p>
<p>“Forks” (or “hard-forks”) are a highly contentious topic in cryptocurrencies. You can analyze a fork with two questions:</p>
<ul class="simple"><li>Does it result in two (persistent) separate branches of the original blockchain?</li>
<li>Does it result in community schism?</li>
</ul><p>In principle, any of the four combinations of these two consequences could happen.</p>
<p>Interestingly, three out of four of these combinations have already occurred in practice!</p>
<div class="figure align-center">
<img alt="A diagram depicting whether a fork resulted in a persistent branch of the blockchain and a schism in the community" class="center-image future-friendly-fork" src="http://blog.z.cash/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/friendly-fork.png"/></div>
<p>In the future, as the Zcash community grows, there may come a time when we need multiple, distinct technologies, each one building on a different branch of the original blockchain. This is likely to happen, because different technologies offer different trade-offs to their users, and some uses of Zcash might benefit more from one technology, while other uses may benefit more from a different, incompatible design.</p>
<p>I hope that, when that time comes, the Zcash community fills in the unoccupied space in the matrix above, deploying different technologies, well-fitted to different needs, but continuing to be tolerant and cooperative with one another, to the benefit of all.</p>