Hook
Ripple’s former CTO, David Schwartz, recently broke down the rationale behind Proof-of-Work forks. The headline screamed “Why Else?” — a rhetorical jab that presupposes some inherent logic. But as a DAO Governance Architect who has spent years auditing the mechanics of decentralized decision-making, I read that question and saw something else: a symptom of a deeper governance failure. Schwartz, a consensus expert from the federated Ripple world, isn’t the first to theorize about Bitcoin forks. Yet his intervention arrives at a peculiar moment — when the fork narrative is all but dead, and L2 solutions have stolen the spotlight. The real question isn’t why forks exist; it’s why we keep revisiting a mechanism that has consistently failed to deliver on its promises.
Context
Bitcoin forks are not new. The block size debate of 2017 spawned Bitcoin Cash (BCH), followed by Bitcoin SV (BSV) in 2018, and dozens of smaller clones. Each fork claimed to fix Bitcoin’s scaling or governance issues. Each ultimately fragmented hashrate, diluted liquidity, and confused users. Today, BCH and BSV trade at a fraction of BTC’s value, with negligible development activity. The market has spoken: forks are not a viable scaling path. Yet Schwartz’s comments — reported without substantive detail — suggest the topic still has enough currency to warrant a heavyweight’s opinion. Why? Because the underlying tension between conservative security and innovative scalability never went away. It merely migrated to Layer 2, where it’s harder to see.
As a Governance Architect, I’ve seen this pattern before. In 2020, a DAO I advised faced a classic fork dilemma: should we hard-fork to fix a bug, or patch via soft upgrade? The community chose soft, preserving unity. That decision was grounded in data — developer activity, token holder distribution, and economic risk. Schwartz’s commentary, by contrast, is abstract. He speaks of “reasons” without citing specific cases. Verification is impossible. Verify everything, trust nothing — that’s the first rule of governance analysis.
Core
Let’s dissect the governance mechanics of a PoW fork. At its core, a fork is a vote — but not a token-weighted vote like in a DAO. It’s a hashrate-weighted vote, where miners signal their preference by pointing computational power at one chain or the other. This is binary, irreversible, and expensive. It’s also deeply inefficient. A DAO vote can be iterative; a fork is a divorce. The fork’s success depends on sustained miner support, which in turn depends on token price. If the forked coin doesn’t attract speculative demand, miners abandon it, security collapses, and the chain dies. This is exactly what happened to Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond, and countless others.
From my experience auditing tokenomics, I can tell you that the incentive structure of a fork is fundamentally flawed. The original chain retains its network effect and brand. The fork must offer a compelling value proposition to attract users and miners. In practice, the only proposition that has worked is speculative greed — the hope that the new coin will moon. That’s not a sustainable economic model. Code is the only law that holds. And the code of a fork is often identical to the original, except for a few parameters like block size or algorithm. The real innovation lies in governance process, not in the code changes. Schwartz, as a Ripple architect, knows this well. Ripple’s consensus doesn’t fork; it uses a UNL (Unique Node List) to maintain agreement. His perspective on Bitcoin forks is inherently comparative — and likely critical.
Let’s add some data. Consider BCH’s hashrate in 2023: it never exceeded 5% of BTC’s total hashrate, and its price volatility is 3x higher. The security budget (miner revenue) for BCH is roughly 1/20th of BTC’s, making it vulnerable to 51% attacks. In fact, BCH suffered multiple reorganization attacks in 2021. The fork didn’t create a more secure network; it created a weaker one. This is the empirical truth that Schwartz’s “Why Else?” fails to address. Fork advocates argue that more chains mean more choice, but in practice, fragmented security is a net loss for the ecosystem. Skepticism is the first line of defense.
Furthermore, the timing of Schwartz’s comment matters. We are in a bear market. Survival matters more than gains. Protocols that are bleeding liquidity are the ones that need scrutiny. A fork narrative in a bear market is a distraction. It diverts attention from real infrastructure work — like Lightning Network adoption, RGB, or drivechains. In my 2022 work on protocol stabilization, I observed that the only forks that survived the crash were those that had a clear use case (e.g., Bitcoin Cash for payments) and a dedicated community. But even those are barely alive. The market does not reward division.
Contrarian
Now, let me play contrarian. Is there any scenario where a PoW fork is justified? Yes — as a governance exit. In decentralized systems, the right to fork is a fundamental check on central authority. If a development team or miner cartel captures the original chain, a fork provides a way out. This is the argument that “Why Else?” implies: forks exist because they must. But this argument conflates the right to fork with the wisdom of actually doing so. Having the right to fork doesn’t mean every fork is good. The 2017 BCH fork was a response to perceived centralization of Bitcoin Core development. Yet today, BCH itself is more centralized (fewer developers, fewer nodes). The exit became a prison.
Another contrarian angle: Schwartz may be trying to defend Bitcoin’s ethos against the rise of L2 solutions that shift trust to centralized operators. L2s like Lightning Network rely on watchtowers, routing nodes, and liquidity providers — all of which introduce new points of failure. A fork, in contrast, keeps everything on-chain. It’s a purist’s approach. But purity comes at a cost: scalability. You cannot have both on-chain throughput and decentralization at the same time. That’s the blockchain trilemma. Schwartz, having worked on Ripple’s federated model, understands trade-offs better than most. His “Why Else?” might be a subtle critique of the L2 obsession, reminding us that forking is a legitimate, if painful, tool.
Still, I remain unconvinced. The data shows that fork coins have failed to gain traction. The market’s attention has shifted to L2s, sidechains, and modular blockchains. These are not forks; they are protocols that extend Bitcoin without splitting its hashrate. In my view, the fork debate is a relic of the 2017 mania. We should treat it as such.
Takeaway
Schwartz’s comments are a blip, not a signal. They tell us more about the enduring appeal of simple narratives than about Bitcoin’s future. The real work is elsewhere: verifying that L2s don’t become new central points of failure, auditing the economic models of new protocols, and designing governance systems that absorb conflict without splitting the chain. As I wrote in my 2026 whitepaper on algorithmic accountability, decentralization must extend to the code governing our agents. Forks are a blunt instrument. We need smarter mechanisms.
The next time someone asks “Why else?” about Bitcoin forks, the answer should be: because we haven’t yet built a better governance system. But we’re working on it.