(general updates about subjects I enjoy, HIVE and things I am doing around this community)
The Hard Fork 26 (HF26) is about to happen
If you are among those that ask questions like "why is this so important", "should I be worried, is it dangerous?", or even "what will change?". Then take a minute to read the following few lines below and let me know if that helps you out.
This is an attempt to make it simple. Way harder than I thought.
A "hard fork" comes when a blockchain has to change rules and one of the sides can no longer continue working in the same way it was initially designed to work.
To figuratively help interpret this, let's imagine, that instead of a blockchain we have a car queue where cars are separated by 1 meter and now you wish them to be equally separated by 5 meters. You can't ask everyone to move without a major disaster right? The same thing for a human queue where communication has to be done by sign language on a 1-to-1 basis, and suddenly you have to change to drawn pictures on paper.
(for purposes of correctness, the queue in here is meant to represent how the chain works, instead of real blocks of the chain)
The hard fork in the above situations would be represented by a "plan" on how to move either to a different distance of the car queue or communication change in the human-to-human queue. This plan is then communicated to everyone participating in those queues, with a pre-established time in the future for everyone to execute it.
That behaviour translates when all of us update the code of the nodes and you notice changes in the versions of new blocks being produced even before the hard fork really happens.
After it finally happens, the new set of rules becomes the new format and everyone will then be experiencing those changes effectively.
Why so crucial to work right?
Besides the obvious points, I already mentioned, "hard forks" are usually one-way execution, so if you do mistakes, you very hardly can return back without major disruption, failures or inconsistent consensus from who runs the nodes. It's usually never a plan, to return back, hence why so important that when "planned", to correctly transition the way we expect.
What differs from a BTC or ETH Forks?
Lot's! But in a nutshell, for those, PoW (Proof of Work) and now PoS (Proof of Stake) blockchains respectively, a hard fork represents the split and duplication of all tokens for everyone. And because there is still a monetary incentive for both worlds of the fork to continue maintaining their living status (which is a temporary value at the time of the fork, usually ending on one of the sides becoming very low in value eventually), they usually progress separate ways in parallel.
On DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) blockchains (like HIVE) that incentive does not prevail so much because the value is not just on the token, but instead on who votes for the new fork to be the desired one, hence there is also value on its users! Without users, there is almost no value, hence "everyone" follows the prevalent (most desired) fork.
A perfect real example of this is what happened to many of us when STEEM was attacked. In this case, that side still has a low and fictional value (there's almost no human activity in there) mainly artificially maintained by whom thought it could just buy it as an asset.
Conclusion
Using this method we can change rules, add new features, fix unbalanced behaviours or fix even wider problems. And that, in simple words, is the way to perform "updates" on how the HIVE blockchain works.
Public Hive Engine infrastructure
- Cloudflare Protected
- HE RPC (https://he.atexoras.com:2083)
- HE P2P (https://he.atexoras.com:2053)
- HE History (https://he.atexoras.com:8443)
Any feedback/problems, please contact me or check if there their status via the UpTimeRobot Monitor.
If you need more nodes, look at https://primersion.com/he-witnesses (you can click on them for extra details). As usual, if you are looking into running a node yourself, and you don't know where to start, drop by me on Discord or just ask below.
2022 Efforts and Activities
For me to keep checking on what I am doing, mostly. If some are not achieved, then I will move them to 2023. It's important to document what you do.
✅ Upgrade my router+firewall
✅ MongoDB light-node (using 
✅ Do a bit of work on a script I have for the "archiving" of snapshots for when things go very bad (now offloaded to external drives)
✅ (ongoing) HPUD 3x 1k HIVE delegations giveaways
✅ (ongoing) Occasionally go to people voting for LONG-stale witnesses and do a bit of voting awareness.
✅ Support at least one DHF project (with technical advice, review and/or direction) - I think I overachieved this one... currently on 3!!! but still managing😅 - let there be more 🔥 😝
✅ Continue exploring SSL based traffic use-cases in order to make benefit from 3rd party tools/solutions like Cloudflare and minimize node exposure
✅ Add the Hive-Engine History node (https://he.atexoras.com:8443)
✅ IPv6 (light and full node now using IPv6 too, with IPv4 for backward compatibility)
💭 (maybe) revive the google drive snapshots service for light nodes (only makes sense if the number of users running light-nodes increases exponentially) - might change this one to personal storage since ISP connection is going to increase.
✅ Maintain Honeycomb type nodes as active as possible on DLUX, 3Speak and Ragnarok side-chains. Support them as possible.
✅ Create an internal IPFS node to support Honeycomb side-chains (internally at first and primarily)
✅ Explore ZFS (requires more memory) as a potential replacement for XFS - Done! Totally worth it!
🚧 Successfully migrate to HF26 🤞
🚧 Moved almost everything to ZFS now, but will need a couple of months of curation towards how things work in order to tick this box.
Also on my list, but initially longer-term things... and these get updated as I learn more from them and plan my time strategicaly!
🚧 ISP upgrade (install done, today!) 😍 - pending tests and swapping preparations to migrate all things.
👁🗨 More 128GB to 256GB ram for new projects! - THIS COSTS!!!! 🤬
👁🗨 Newer CPUs (at least one new 16-core Zen3 by the end of 2022 is my objective, but in addition, a new host might be on the list for smaller stuff)
💥 (probably not going to happen) Trying to create a new Storage Cluster (Ceph most likely) of (3-5) x nodes... but there are no resources... 😣 This would be awesome for future growth and versatility - maybe a 2023 thing...
See you all on the other side of HF26
💪 Helping HIVE users... 👍
I will continue to help new 🐟 users as much as I can... being that via the 
But in general, anyone seeking genuine help through me will have 100% dedication... primarily free.
Disclaimer: I am not a Cyborg or Robot and therefore I might not be always available promptly, but I will eventually follow up with you. I also have a life. 😋
🖐️HIVE5's!
Have fun, good luck on all the gaming, learning, and when/if you are up to, teaching new things to newcomers, showing them how interesting is this place.
🤝 Follow me on Twitter
Follow for #news about the #HIVE #Blockchain, and other stuff. I sometimes get crazy with what happens around social media. I am following all HIVE users! No promises of behaviour. 😁
In addition, if you are looking for a nice place to either reach out, share or just have a great time, come along to
👉 Vote for Witnesses
(⚡Vote) - Hive-Engine here - voting uses staked WORKERBEE
(⚡Vote) - HIVE here - voting uses staked HIVE
(✍Delegate) - 3Speak Network - You win 0.015% SPK tokens if you delegate LARYNX to other nodes, as opposed to only 0.010% from your powered LARYNX!
🐝 Hive Blockchain Games 🎮
| Year | Title | Post link (👆4+ℹ️nfo) |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | The ecosystem is expanding! |  (credit  ) |
| 2020 | The power of having fun! |  (credit  ) |
💳 Cryptocurrency Cards
| Crypto.com 😎😍💞 | Crypterium (forgot) | TenX (retired) | Revolut (pending) | Wirex (fuckdup) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |
