Fork

The word “fork” gets used for several different things in crypto and they’re worth distinguishing. The simplest kind is a temporary fork: two validators propose competing valid blocks at the same height, the network briefly disagrees about which is canonical, and within a few blocks the consensus mechanism resolves which one wins. The other one is dropped (orphaned). This happens routinely on most chains and isn’t a problem.

A planned fork is a coordinated software upgrade where every validator runs new client software that changes the protocol rules at a specific block height. Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS (the Merge, September 2022) was a planned fork. NEAR’s halving in October 2025 was implemented through a planned fork (protocol version 81). Planned forks require near-universal validator buy-in because if a significant minority doesn’t upgrade, the chain splits permanently.

A contentious fork is what happens when the community can’t agree on a protocol change and a portion of validators run one version while another portion runs a different version. Both versions have valid history up to the split, and after that point they’re separate chains. Bitcoin Cash forking from Bitcoin in 2017 was a contentious fork. Ethereum Classic forking from Ethereum in 2016 (after the DAO hack) was another. The result is two tokens, two communities, and two parallel networks that no longer talk to each other.

In DeAI, forks usually appear in the planned variety: Bittensor has shipped several protocol upgrades through coordinated forks, NEAR uses them for halvings and major changes. Contentious forks are rare in DeAI because most projects are too small to support two viable post-fork communities. The Templar/Covenant exit from Bittensor in April 2026 was not a fork — Covenant left the network entirely rather than forking it, taking their team and IP to a new project. The OYM Bittensor project review and Templar tokenomics article cover the difference.