Fork in the Road

Steem is forking! This time for real, as most other chains out there.

Not an upgrade, but two different chains post-fork.

One that we knew as Steem -- and I can't say I find myself in it lately --, the other will be new and called Hive -- hopefully a new beginning.

The witnesses who support the new Hive chain, and thus the split, will, by 14pm UTC, run version 0.23.0 of the chain. Those who don't, won't, or didn't finish replaying their witness nodes.

Many steemians want to support Hive exclusively going forward. If that's you, you should make sure you vote for witnesses running version 0.23.0 when the time comes.

Also many steemians want to continue in both ecosystems, if or for as long as it will be possible. Then you don't have to do anything, unless you feel like it. You'll have the same accounts on both blockchains, but what you do from the fork onward will be only on Hive or on Steem, based on your choice. Unless some applications will later decide to post on both chains, if both chains remain active on the medium / long term.

And other steemians will probably choose to stay on Steem exclusively, in which case they'll be left mostly with Justin Sun puppet witnesses, until he decides otherwise.

I will be mainly on Hive, but I might post on Steem from time to time if I feel it's suited. At least for a while.

Close to and post hardfork, both STEEM and HIVE tokens will likely be under extreme volatility conditions.

If you're not good to trade under these conditions, maybe it's better to stay off the market. Don't sell or buy based on the emotions those swings will produce to you.

That is of course my unprofessional opinion and you should do what you prefer with your hard earned tokens.