Crypto glossary
Network upgrade
A network upgrade is a coordinated change to a blockchain's protocol rules, shipped through new client releases and activated at a set block, slot or date.
Blockchains cannot be patched by a single company pushing an update. Changes are proposed in documents such as Bitcoin's BIPs or Ethereum's EIPs, debated publicly, implemented by independent client teams and tested on testnets. Node operators then install the new software, and the change takes effect at an agreed activation point.
Ethereum bundles several EIPs into named hard forks roughly once or twice a year, such as Dencun in 2024, which introduced blob transactions, and Pectra in 2025. Bitcoin upgrades far less often, through soft forks like SegWit and Taproot that are activated by miner signalling or a set block height. Other networks use on-chain governance votes to approve upgrades.
Upgrades carry risk. Nodes that fail to update can end up on a separate chain, exchanges sometimes pause deposits around activation, and bugs in new code can halt finality or block production. Contentious changes can split a community and its chain, so major upgrades often take years of discussion.
Example
Before the Dencun upgrade, Ethereum node operators had to install new versions of both their execution and consensus clients; nodes left on old software stopped following the main chain at the fork epoch.
Related terms
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