We have seen some people or groups, who claim they are hardforking ETH,.
The plan of the first, NOVA, whose intention was to scam others of their hard earned money, was foiled early enough, because it was using a fake.
ETCV on the other hand was not quickly detected, but its team was anonymous, which i feel is enough to suspect them of scam.
Right now, its telegram account has changed when i checked.
It's website is suspended and so on.
They are now asking people to buy their coin, which does not exist.
Therefore, the only genuine hardfork, is the constantinople.
I am usually confused when a coin to be forked from another is conducting an ICO or bounty campaign. I thought the hard fork implies just splitting an already existing coin into another? People should be wary of such ICO project no matter how attractive their bonuses may be.
A hard fork is a rule change such that the software validating according to the old rules will see the blocks produced according to the new rules as invalid. In case of a hard fork, all
nodes meant to work in accordance with the new rules need to upgrade their software.
If one group of nodes continues to use the old software while the other nodes use the new software, a split can occur. For example, Ethereum has hard-forked to "make whole" the investors in The DAO, which had been hacked by exploiting a vulnerability in its code. In this case, the fork resulted in a split creating Ethereum and Ethereum Classic chains. In 2014 the Nxt community was asked to consider a hard fork that would have led to a rollback of the blockchain records to mitigate the effects of a theft of 50 million NXT from a major cryptocurrency exchange. The hard fork proposal was rejected, and some of the funds were recovered after negotiations and ransom payment.
Alternatively, to prevent a permanent split, a majority of nodes using the new software may return to the old rules, as was the case of bitcoin split on 12 March 2013.
Soft forkIn contrast to a hard fork, a soft fork is a change of rules that creates blocks recognized as valid by the old software, i.e. it
is backwards-compatible. As for a hard fork, a soft fork can also split the blockchain when non-upgraded software creates blocks not considered valid by the new rules.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(blockchain)