A soft fork in crypto currencies basically means an upgrade of the software. A soft fork is much easier to perform than a hard fork. If a software update is performed that is downward compatible, it is called a soft fork. This means that no new crypto currency is created, only the existing crypto currency is changed. Most of the time this does not affect users and they often do not get a soft fork.
The upgrade often concerns only technical things and fixes possible security gaps or changes a small thing. However, if you are a Miner yourself, you must of course upgrade the software, otherwise the results will be rejected by the block chain.
There were already soft forks for several crypto currencies, and most of the time they worked without problems.
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