Written by Pablo Gómez
Founder & CEO at Metlabs · Reviewed on October 11, 2026
In a soft fork the new rules restrict what was previously valid, so non-upgraded nodes accept the new blocks because they still satisfy their looser rules. SegWit is the textbook mechanism: it separates the signature data ("witness") and old nodes simply ignore it and see the transaction as valid, avoiding a split. In a hard fork the rules change such that old nodes reject the new blocks, and each group follows its own channel. Most of Ethereum's planned upgrades are coordinated hard forks where the whole network is expected to update, so they create neither a new coin nor a chain split.
A fork is the mechanism by which a blockchain evolves, adds features and fixes flaws, and also the one that explains the birth of derivative networks. For tokenization it matters for asset continuity: a contentious hard fork can duplicate or fragment the state where tokens live, so it is worth knowing the upgrade policy of the network you issue on.
