Fork day is incoming, scheduled for tomorrow at 1200 GMT, which is 1500 my time, so I will be at work. Hopefully though, I will be able to keep an eye out for the moment it changes over, as it is always exciting.
In the past there have been some great forks and some infamously bad forks - the funniest being when the Resource Credits were introduced and it calculated people into a negative and no one could do anything for days.
Hopefully, this one goes smoothly.
At least the majority of witnesses seem ready, with 90% of the Top 20 already on version 1.26.0, with 75% needed for the fork to happen, so all systems are go.
When I was reading the announcement, there were two little things that I hadn't heard mentioned before, which is
- changing the "three second vote rule" so it will be possible to vote in rapid succession.
- that all votes count, meaning that even dust votes will force a comment onto the chain
That second one helps with immutability, but the first one is a welcome change for me, as I am often voting comments in quick succession, but more importantly, it allows me to quickly downvote long streams of Phishing spam, as I did yesterday. Waiting the three seconds and getting the pop-up warnings, is annoying.
I didn't know the haircut rule was being changed either, which is quite a big change in my opinion, so surprised there wasn't discussion around it. I will assume "best intentions" and "people far smarter than me" that it is the right move for the chain. With all the issues with stable coins this year, it is probably better to be safe than sorry.
But, you can read more here about it from the official 
@hiveio/the-evolution-of-hive-hardfork-26
What I will mention however, is that if you aren't used to hardforks, you will likely notice that some of the services you use might not work for some time, including interfaces. This is because the changes in the blockchain code will affect the way the second-layer apps need to be coded too and this takes time, Some might be ready for the hardfork, but even then, there are likely to be disruptions while updates are applied. So, keep an eye on things like:
- scheduled votes
- auto voting and trails
- interface features not working
- sites down
- slowdowns
- transactions not processing
...the list goes on.
So be patient.
Don't let the disruption get to you, just get on about your day and don't stress and complain if things aren't as normal. If it ends up being a complete disaster, don't go into Discords screaming about things that you have no control over and if you are in a discord that this kind of things happen, leave.
These kinds of updates to the chain code are complex and no matter how much planning and testing are performed, there are still likely tiny pieces of coding error that go undetected, and those tiny errors can be catastrophic for the chain to function. If it all falls apart...
Go out for a walk and get some fresh air.
Hopefully though, it will run smoothly and we will not notice much on the front ends at all, but many of the applications that you might use are likely already facing disruptions. Hive-blog was out for a few minutes not so long ago too.
It's okay. Breathe.
What I find interesting about the drama around when things go wrong on Hive during hardforks, is that people take it all so seriously and act as if it will never work again. Honestly, it is not the end of the world - there is more to life than getting votes on your content, or in my case, missing a day posting. The last day I missed was because of a hardfork failing terribly - just after @Ned announced a little prematurely, that it was a huge success.
Those were the days... I wonder what became of old Ned?
So, in 15 hours from now, we are going to fork.
Should be fun!
But the best bit isn't the fork itself, it is the next six months following, where new possibilities are built on the new capabilities, like RC delegations! How long have we been waiting for it? What will the applications do with it? Will it help onboarding? Time will tell.
Happy Fork day!
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]