It's not a hard fork it is "a system upgraded".
Ever heard of propaganda?
Oh the difficulty bomb is coming!
[Which was coded in the original code]
Here is the fact:
The real hard fork in the road is to be a coin or to be a token platform.
ETH can be not both.
BTC tried and failed. See XCP and OMNI.
Platforms like Waves, Neos, ARDR, Xem, even coin emitters Tron, EOS, and many more have functional cost efficient token capacity. Namely, cheap. Then speed and scale. Also built-in DEX.
But, Platforms are not coins. They are a service. With semi-centralized code administrators, and the networks are a federation of the "elect" owner-operator. They provide a service. THEY ARE NOT COINS!
ETH is really (if it stops HF-ing) best suited as a coin.
BTC is the same dame.
Failure leads to ETC capturing "the coin / SoV" title.
And ETH hf-ing off into a POS-delegate token platform.
That means ultra-conservative code base. And any improvement needs to be backwards compatible. HF is heresy.