Layer by Layer Issue 40: Ethereum, Solana, and Cosmos

One underappreciated aspect of blockchains today is that they are dynamic by nature. Every successive block confirmed by validators changes the state of a blockchain, adding a new set of transactions to its immutable ledger. Sometimes, these state changes can be dramatic, such as when a chain is forked and validators and stakeholders must come to a consensus on the “canonical” chain. Forks can be unintentional, as in the recent case of the Ethereum beacon chain’s reorg following a staggered client release in May, or the Solana mainnet’s repeated forks that led to impaired validator performance in April. 

Forks can also be performed intentionally, such as when the Terra chain was hard forked following the collapse of the original chain in May. More commonly, hard forks are accompanied by network upgrades that can range from small optimizations to major revisions of core architecture. One of the most significant hard forks in recent memory is Ethereum’s London upgrade in August 2021 which implemented the EIP-1559 proposal and brought fundamental changes to the world’s most widely used smart contract platform.