A hard fork is a process when developers significantly change the way a cryptocurrency project works, often creating a new one.
Examples of hard forks are such coins as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Litecoin, and others.
As a rule, the need for a hard fork arises when it is required to carry out global changes, which affects the very principles of the system. It is not uncommon for an old version of software to become almost useless and incompatible with new changes.
After the hard fork, in most cases, another coin appears, which has many similarities to the parent and often even uses its code, but at the same time it is more perfect and often improves various problematic aspects.
One of the features of hard forks is that they allow you to get “free” coins.
During the hard fork, the blockchain from the previous project is also copied, so everyone who had, for example, 5 BTC on their Bitcoin wallet, receives the same amount of a new coin, for example, Bitcoin Cash, to their new wallet.
However, there are also reverse situations. Sometimes a hard fork is just an update released by the developers.
Then the coins do not appear again but are sent to address zero (burned), and the owners are given the same number of coins with an updated code.
This was the case with some projects based on the Ethereum platform.
Hard forks are actively attracting the attention of crypto community members since most often they are made by people with big names in the blockchain industry.
For example, Litecoin was created by Charles Lee, a very famous person in the crypto community.
Despite the fact that the price of LTC does not come close to the price of BTC, the coin is technologically more advanced than Bitcoin, and also uses a different encryption algorithm.
Thus, a hard fork is needed to improve the project. Since the code of any cryptocurrency is in the public domain, each developer can make his own changes there and provide it as another hard fork, which has a high chance of adoption by the crypto community.