Social Consensus Forks

Social consensus forks occur when a community decides to manually override the protocol rules to resolve a critical issue, such as a major hack or a consensus failure. Instead of relying on the automated rules of the code, participants coordinate off-chain to agree on a new version of the software that ignores the attacker's actions.

This is often seen as a last resort, as it contradicts the idea of code being law and can lead to a permanent split in the network. While it can save a protocol from catastrophic loss, it introduces human intervention and political power into the decentralized system.

This creates uncertainty for users and investors, as the rules of the network are no longer strictly defined by the underlying technical architecture.