Forks and network upgrades
What the word fork covers, from a harmless split lasting seconds to a permanent separation of one network into two.
Forks come in more than one kind. The common one is accidental: two participants produce valid blocks at nearly the same time, and for a short while different nodes see different tips of the chain. The network's rules include a method for choosing between them, such as following the chain with the most work or the most validator support, and the losing block is dropped as a stale or orphaned block. Its transactions go back into the waiting pool and usually appear in a later block. This is why a very recent transaction is treated with some caution: it can sit in a block that the network later sets aside.
The second kind comes from changing the rules. A soft fork tightens them, so blocks made under the new rules are still accepted by nodes that have not upgraded. A hard fork loosens or replaces them, so upgraded and non-upgraded nodes disagree about what is valid. When nearly everyone upgrades on a published schedule, the old version simply fades out. When a community is divided, the two groups can keep running their own rules, and the one ledger becomes two separate networks that share history up to the split. Upgrades are therefore discussed openly beforehand, with test networks and announced activation points.
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