Forking is basically updating a software. All of us update software and apps in our mobiles every now and then. This Updating simply means changes in a better way. Why Bitcoin Forking Needed We all know that for Bitcoin transactions to complete we need confirmation from 6 nodes. Currently there are approx 300,000 bitcoin transactions per day. This comes out to be approx 3.5 in a second. Against this visa credit card handles 1667 and pay pal 193 transactions per second as per 2016 data. As awareness of Bitcoin is going up how do we ensure timely confirmation from nodes. This time to confirm had gone up tremendously. Whereas earlier it used to be hardly few seconds to 2-3 min, it increased to several hours. At times transactions takes even more than 24 hours to confirm. This became a major bottleneck for bitcoin transactions and were considered as a hindrance in routine bitcoin transactions. Number of transactions were increasing day by day but the software was not able to accommodate all transactions. During June’17 confirmation time went as high as 2500 minutes as shown by blockchain.info. Hence people’s perception of this wonder currency started to diminish as they realized that this wonder currency cannot be future global currency since the software is incapable of handling very high number of transactions. The comparison was now with the number of transactions we do on credit cards or paypal. While the limitation of Bitcoin Software to process very large number of transactions was very obvious, there were software engineers and developers who were thinking out of the window and trying to find out a way to this problem. Meanwhile due to this limitation, the price of Bitcoin also go effected and this was certain that until and unless some solution is worked out, Bitcoin will burst like a bubble and in no case could be considered as global currency of future. The software engineers and developers came up with the solution of forking the software. Forking the software simply meant up-gradation of Bitcoin software. However this could mean that some changes have to be done in the original software and by doing so the bitcoin software may not remain same and there might be threat to existing bitcoin network. This need of having some changes in Bitcoin Software gave the need for bitcoin forking.  Types of Forking Soft Fork  - as a lay man one need to understand that Soft Fork means upgrading any software to the extent that basic software remain same, changes are small and even if one wants to return to initial software one can do. The perfect example is the updating of basic apps in our mobile which keeps upgrading. At any points if we delete the upgrades, still the system works on original app without upgrades, although not with right efficiency.  Hard Fork - the hard fork is a major change in software. One has to update software in order to run it. Without updating software, one cannot continue running on old version. It is not reversible. The program doesn’t run if a user doesn’t upgrade it. If for any reason, a bug is found after hard fork creating problem in smooth functioning of the software, only solution is to create another hard fork to reach earlier version.Conclusion: Most Programs usually update with a soft fork. Gradually when most of the software have been updated, then system goes for a hard fork after which you cannot run on older version. This is possible because most of the software or programs are owned by an entity who has a command on its decisions. For example, android comes up with updates and it is advisable to update them. Even if you do not update you can continue using the software (soft fork). It is still advisable to update since after some time you may not be able to use very old version (hard fork).