05 Nov A new future for Symbol and NEM: About forking time!
Well it is Bonfire Night here in the UK and we got the occasion off to a flying start with some fireworks from the pirates! After a few delays and I suspect many all-nighters (Hatchet do you actually require sleep?) everything became clear. Any issues with the NEM Trust will be removed if we the community support proposed hard forks of NEM and Symbol. You can read more about both here. I am going to try to summarise below but basically it is already pretty condensed so I am going to end up plagiarising the original document. I am sure the Pirates won’t mind, it is done with the best of intentions and helps spread the word a little further 😇
Symbol “Cyprus” Hardfork
The pirates have said that the Cyprus hardfork (named after a 19th century sailing ship) will signal consent to the new vision behind Symbol’s future. You know that I love this vision so I am in and have already updated my node xymharvesting.net to support the proposed fork. I am pretty sure that there will be an overwhelming consensus in the community that the fork is the right option for a new start for Symbol so I expect this to gain a majority and very quickly.
The upshot of the fork will be that all of the NEM Trust held funds will be burned and equivalent new funds will be minted into a new 4-of-7 multisig account. This includes four cosigners from Valkyrie and the three Symbol core developers: Jaguar, Gimre and Hatchet.
Apparently the hardfork will run for a period of 7 days and will execute at block height 689,761 so if you are a node owner and want to support the fork then please take action soon for the sake of Symbol’s future and your own delegates.
NEM “Harlock” Fork
NEM will have its own hardfork codenamed Harlock which will allow users to signal support for integrating NEM as a subChain of Symbol – Captain Harlock was a space captain after all, so it kind of makes sense that he would want to bring NEM into XYM City. It will also lead to a burn of all current NEM core funds (managed by the Trust) and minting of equivalent new funds which will be under the control of the core devs and Valkyrie. This time with a 5-of-7 multisig account (not sure why one extra cosigner is required for the NEM funds so don’t ask me why!) 😁
EDIT – this is why:
The Harlock hardfork will run for 14 days, and execute at block height 3,464,800. I do not own a NEM node and no longer have any XEM (still slightly heartbroken by this) but if you’re still a hardcore NEMber then please support the Pirates! I would love to see you all come join the Symbol subChain party and further the integration and interoperability between the two chains.
You can find more information on the history of NEM and previous forks in this document. It is also now (finally!) out of beta and open source!
Why support the forks?
I think that the answer to this is pretty obvious. If you support the core devs and the future vision for NEM and Symbol then you need to support the forks. There have been several passionate posts from myself and others on this topic so why not give them a read and see if you agree with the new vision, leadership and direction of NEM and Symbol or if you still believe that the old ways are the best.
Don’t be lazy, this is the time to act and update your nodes. It took me like 5 minutes to do this with Symbol Bootstrap, it may be a lot more involved for NEM(?) but you guys have a whole week longer to get it done 😁 The worst possible outcome here would be that the fork does not gain support as people can’t be bothered to upgrade. It would be bad news for the projects and for the community so let’s be strong, be coordinated and get this done 🦾. It will be nice to live in a world where we aren’t embroiled in politics and sleaze anymore. I look forward to that time 😊
Also apologies in advance – I will be bugging you for a while to update your nodes and support the forks 😂 I hope that node hosting services such as Allnodes will be fast to react to community demand and update their nodes quickly too.
EDIT: Man those guys are fast!!
Good job Allnodes! 👏👏👏
When will we know the results?
Not long to wait! Apparently November 11th or 12th for the Symbol fork “Cyprus” and the 18th or 19th November for the NEM fork “Harlock”.
Further information
Please read the full document for further details on the forks, restructuring, Valkyrie and proposed new entities. I also highly recommend the excellent “Reflections of Space Pirates” which outlines the future vision which we will show our support for (maybe some won’t??!) in the upcoming days.
I’m a Symbol and NEM enthusiast and run this blog to try to grow awareness of the platform in the English-speaking world. If you have any Symbol news you would like me to report on or you have an article that you would like to publish then please let me know!
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