You may have noticed over the past couple of weeks that things have been kind of flaky on Hive. I am still seeing some of the behaviors this morning as I work commenting on the posts from the weekend and prepare to type up this post.
I have tried jumping around to different nodes and it has fixed the issues for a short time only for them pop up again.
I don't really use many other front ends for Hive, and I know the issues aren't specifically with PeakD, so I don't really hold it against them.
If I am being real, I have to tell you, it is probably going to get worse before it gets better. My best advice? Be patient and hang on. In fact, I am thinking long and hard about not even trying to post new content tomorrow.
I remember the first hard fork I went through when I was over on the Steem chain. I was still pretty green and I didn't understand all of the nuts and bolts that went with keeping a blockchain together. It was so frustrating trying to do anything that first couple of days after the HF.
My posts weren't making that much money anyway, but there were some people who were absolutely livid about the fact that they couldn't access the chain. Discord was blowing up with people trying to perform transactions on the platform and not being able to.
Working in IT myself, I had no doubt that the Witnesses were doing their best to iron out the wrinkles and get things up and running as quickly as possible. I had been hustling really hard with zero gain up to that point, so it was kind of nice to take a breather.
So here is my advice for you heading into tomorrow... As much as I want things to go smoothly and there to be no issues, be prepared for it to be messy. Plan ahead that your daily Hive routine is not going to look the same as it usually does.
If things are not 100% tomorrow, take that time to find a little piece of Zen and just take a break from the hustle. Even if you are doing this full time, it is okay to take a break sometimes. Knowing that tomorrow could be your "break day" will make it less frustrating should that be the case.
A lot of the stuff that is happening with this Hard Fork is actually pretty behind the scenes. I think this is actually the first hard fork I can remember in a while that shouldn't impact our rewards in any way, shape, or form.
That is encouraging to me. It tells me that the platform is maturing and getting to a point where the only things that need to be done are minor upkeep items on the back end.
This should be really exciting for you if you are a long time Hive user. I think it shows that Hive is genuinely ready to compete and overtake some of the non-blockchain alternatives out there.
With that in mind, here are a couple things you shouldn't do:
If things don't go smoothly, don't bug the Witnesses about it non-stop. Trust me, if things are not right, they are going to know, and they are going to be working tirelessly on getting things back to normal. The more they have to field your messages means less time they are actively working on the problem.
Second, let's keep the complaints off Twitter and other social media outlets. I know first hand how frustrating it can be when a piece of technology you rely on stops working. For Hive to be successful, we need to grow the community and bring new users to the platform. Flooding Twitter (or whatever) with disparaging comments about the platform and witnesses will be counter productive to that goal.
My best advice, if it doesn't go smoothly: Take a breath, plan on dedicating the majority of your time tomorrow to something non-Hive related just in case, and maybe by Wednesday things will be back to normal.