The HIVE Blockchain has had a number of Hard Forks over the years. In Laymans Terms, a Hard Fork is just a Cyptocurrency terminology for a software upgrade where the underlying Blockchain is altered. Anyone who has been on the platform for a while would know that these things don’t always go smoothly and while we don’t really expect any major issues to arise from this Hard Fork it’s good to be prepared for the worst case scenario.
One of the worst case scenarios can be where there is a Chain Freeze – this is where the Blockchain basically stops because of a bug and no transactions can occur. That means no posts, no votes, nothing. We saw this happen a while back when we were calling ourselves STEEM. Even worse would be a Rollback which I haven’t seen happen yet on this Blockchain but it’s happened on others. Here transactions actually get lost – or more specifically, thrown away because a bug (or hack) that cannot be overcome. This disaster scenario is the main reason why many Crypto Exchanges freeze deposits and withdrawals of a Cryptocurrency either side of a Hard Fork. They are protecting themselves from this risk because a Rollback can be very expensive for them (and their users)
There are lots of other things that can go wrong with these things and we are not trying to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) about this Hard Fork as it does look like a pretty simple and straightforward one, but we do want our community to be aware and prepared. If you are planning any big transfers of your HIVE, it’d be wise (just like the exchanges) to make sure the Hard Fork has been successfully completed and everything is running smoothly before doing your big transfer. It’s also worth pointing out that our Precious Mermaid might have a few problems keeping up with her regular support of members content if there is complications with the Hard Fork so please be patient as we (and our witnesses) work through any issues that might arise.
With any luck most of our community will not even notice any changes and our Precious will be unaffected by the upgrade, but it’s better to be safe than be sorry so good luck to you and we’ll see you on the other side!
