The key differences between hard forks and soft forks in blockchain are:
Hard forks involve a significant change to the rules of the blockchain protocol that makes previous transactions and blocks invalid. This results in a permanent split of the blockchain, creating a new, incompatible version. All nodes must upgrade to the new protocol for the network to function properly. Examples include the creation of Bitcoin Cash from Bitcoin and Ethereum Classic from Ethereum.[1][2][3][4]
Soft forks, on the other hand, are backward-compatible upgrades that introduce new rules without invalidating the old ones. Nodes running the older software can still recognize and validate transactions on the new blockchain. Soft forks allow the network to be upgraded without splitting th...
