Unlike hard forks, soft forks are a bit easier to implement on blockchain networks.

Something you may have experienced is a phone software update. Just because there is an update available for your phone’s operating system firmware, doesn’t mean you need to upgrade (although sometimes they do annoy you!). This can relate directly to soft forks.

Soft forks are upgrades to network protocols where older versions will continue to support new blocks created on the network. Simply put, soft forks are backwards compatible. These kind of forks are for when the community agrees on a new set of rules in terms of blockchain logic. The more validators/stakers/miners who accept the new upgrades, the more secure the network will be going forward.

Visually, the differences between a hard fork and a soft work are easy to spot.

Finally, using an example of both a hard fork and a soft could alleviate any remaining confusion. Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin (see above), where as BIP66 is a network upgrade for the Bitcoin network.