Soft Forks Allow Older Nodes to Validate; Hard Forks Require Upgrades

This is a useful reminder that the technical label of a fork says little about its market or social consequences. The distinction matters most for node operators, whose upgrade choices determine how smoothly a change propagates, and for anyone assuming a hard fork necessarily splits a chain into a new asset. The open question is how much of the market still conflates the two, and whether that gap in understanding shapes reactions the next time a network proposes a change.