On August 1st, a segment of the Bitcoin community will activate the BIP148 UASF.
These users and miners will only accept Bitcoin blocks that signal support for Segregated Witness (SegWit),
the protocol upgrade proposed by the Bitcoin Core development team.
If, at that point, a majority of miners (by hash power) does not signal support for SegWit through BIP148, Bitcoin’s blockchain and currency could split in two: a coin-split.
Now, with hard fork announcement,
it seems there could be a third part to the split … sort of.
the term referred to a change to the Bitcoin protocol that makes previously invalid blocks or transactions valid. But for it to be a change to the Bitcoin protocol, it arguably at the very least requires the Bitcoin ecosystem to follow these new rules.
Rather, the “UAHF” will only be launched in response to a successful BIP148 UASF. It is thus more or less assumed that not everyone will adopt the new rules, which indeed seems likely.
Technically, at least, “hard fork” would be better described as the creation of an entirely new coin that shares a common history with Bitcoin.
well...... we will see.