Well I must say that last HardFork went smoothly, even with the Fork implementing some pretty major updates to the chain, I hardly noticed it happen!
The only noticeable sign for me was the draining of RCs to 0, but that was easily remediable with a little spare liquid Hive and now a few of the Front Ends are lagging a little playing catch up, but that's to be expected....
And IMO some of these latest changes make Hive even more appealing....
Changes with HF26
- Resource Credit (RC) delegations independent of Hive Power are here!
- RC costs have changed - all txs are more expensive, permanent operations much more so.
- The HBD Hair cut limit has been increased from 10% to 30%
- One Block Irreversibility
- 'Dust votes' are now paid out.
- The three second voting time limit has been removed
- No penalty for changing your vote
- You can update your keys twice in an hour not just once per hour.
This is a nice succinct summary post on the evolution of Hive with HF26 by @hive.io - worth a read!
What's below is just my thoughts on the significance of the changes I think are going to have the most impact...!
Resource Credit Changes
Early analysis shows that RC costs have more than doubled, and while the cost of account creation hasn't yet been increased in line with this, I've heard it mooted that account creation could be so expensive in the near future that you could need tens of thousands of HP to claim just one account every few days.
All of this has been done to make Hive more sustainable, so that the cost of transactions more accurately reflect the load those txs put on the system, so fair enough I say.
NB new accounts put a disproportionate load on systems resources!
RC delegations now possible without HP delegations.
The two aren't separate - the amount of HP you have still directly determines the amount of RCs you get, but you can now choose to delegate those RCs either directly or to a pool using the new @rc-angel service run by @deathwing.
The advantage of this is that you can choose to help Dapps or users with insufficient HP for RCs while maintaining all of your HP for curation returns.
This should be a great help in keeping Hive running more smoothly for new users while they get their heads around how to buy more Hive - and at the end of the day that's what I'd like to see - buy your own Hive and sufficient for yer RC needs!
Of course I imagine that in the long term someone will develop a paid for RC delegation service, where people can rent RCs rather than donating them, but that's to come I guess!
Hive - HBD Debt Ratio increased from 10% to 30%
Colloquially known as the 'haircut rule' (actually I badly need a haircut myself ATW!) this means that HBD stops being printed altogether when the total value of HBD in circulation reaches 30% of the total value of all the Virtual Hive supply.
(NB the HBD in the DAO is excluded from this calculation.)
Thus if the the Total Market Cap of Hive = £100 000 000 then HBD will stop printing when there is $30 000 000 worth of HBD in circulation.
When I say HBD will stop being printed this only refers to author rewards which will be paid out only in Hive and Hive Power, payments to DAO recipients will continue to be made.
At least I think this happens at 30% or is it 20%...?
20% or 30% Haircut...?
One thing I don't quite get is the 20% soft-limit I've seen referred to - does this mean author rewards stop being paid out at 20% and then something else happens at 30%?
This is testimony to the poor communication about this sort of stuff - I mean I went to HiveFest - heard literally nothing about this in any of the presentations. I've looked for clarification, couldn't find any.
So if anyone that's part of the inner Discord circle could clarify what happens at 20% ratio and what at 30% that would be great!
This post by @dalz is worth a read to find out more about the HBD haircut rule.
The Implications of the above are hopefully growth for Hive - if we're permitting a 30% stable coin ratio to the value of Hive that means we can have a lot of HBDs in circulation.
However it does also potentially mean more volatility for the Hive price in the medium term as larger volumes will potentially have to be sold to stabilise any large sells of HBDs.
Of course as the volume of Hive grows going forwards this should be less of an issue, and I guess the emission or more HBDs will help this - I mean, everyone loves a stable coin, right...?!?
One block irreversibility
I guess this is one of those boring but important things - I mean we won't notice any difference in our day to day using of Hive but this does make Hive more immutable, one of those big important concepts in the blockchain world.
Dust votes paid out...
A nice little change this - means I can give people a 1 or 2% cheeky upvote for a comment spreading my vote more widely.
Other changes...
There are a few other changes as well, as listed above, some may well be technically more important than the ones I've selected above, but none of the rest interest me in particular.
All in all I'd say this has been a very significant HardForm which makes Hive a more attractive investment going forwards!
The Evolution of Hive - Lucky You Bitcoin's Down!
Which means in FIAT terms NOW is a great time to buy up a little more Hive... and with so much more functionality now compared to pre-HF26 I personally think it's a great time to buy!