What Is the Primary Difference between a Hard Fork and a Soft Fork in Blockchain Governance?

A hard fork is a permanent divergence from the previous version of the blockchain. Non-upgraded nodes can no longer validate blocks created by the new version, essentially creating two separate chains.

A soft fork, however, is a backward-compatible change. Non-upgraded nodes can still validate the new blocks, though they may not understand the new rules.

Soft forks require only a majority of miners/validators to adopt the new rules.