[Hardfork](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/leoglossary-fork) 26 is getting really close. I've just read through a [mainly technical post for witnesses](https://leofinance.io/@themarkymark/how-to-update-your-witness-to-hardfork-26-release-canidate-3) by @themarkymark, and it looks like the hardfork date remained settled at October 11th. If nothing happens in between, that's when the hardfork will occur. That's next week, on Tuesday, only a couple of days away.

https://images.hive.blog/DQmVDF7vS1ko87t5NQeZECTJo7SjtmvzTE8W8gDRB6ouHyd/Hive-logo-name.jpg

I'm still wondering why there's no public announcement about HF26 on @hiveio, our official [blockchain](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/blockchain) account on [Hive](https://leofinance.io/@crypto-guides/what-is-hive-crypto-hive) if we can call it like that. Is it because the date isn't really set yet, although it's hardcoded to be less than a week into the future? Or it was an oversight?

During a hardfork, the heavy lifting is done by our Hive [witnesses](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/leoglossary-block-producer). And **they** need to be ready for it, primarily.

But that doesn't mean we can't do a little bit ourselves before it happens.

The first thing I can think of is to check our witness votes. Be careful who you take away the votes from! During this period witnesses will start to switch to the new 1.26.0 version of the blockchain (hived), and there might be downtime, which may result in some witness [nodes](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/leoglossary-node) being temporarily down, while they replay the new version.

[![image.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmXcGe7PAkhv73w2ZHLUVE2CoLL98m7bQKajReXLNoWq3X/image.png)](https://hive.arcange.eu/witnesses/)

Any vote on a witness that runs a blockchain version below the current one (1.25.0) is wasted because they don't produce any [blocks](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/leoglossary-block) even if the nodes are active. After a successful hardfork 26, version 1.25.0 will become obsolete as well, and all witnesses that will be in [consensus](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/leoglossary-consensus) will run a version of hived of 1.26.x. "x" might differ between witnesses if the minor version upgrade doesn't affect consensus.

**What else can you do to prepare for HF26 as a regular user?**

I'm not sure there's much else, but here's something else that I'll do in one of the following days.

![image.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmSyjwELgoCxpeMXFTunDEoGQv2YXEpbUd65JwZNXXBF57/image.png)

I will disable the 'Claim Accounts' auto-task option in Keychain.

Why? I don't know if front ends will offer [RC](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/leoglossary-resource-credits-rc) delegation right after the HF26 is completed, but I'm going to assume at least the major ones will.

I wouldn't want to have my RCs depleted automatically to claim account tokens when I'll need them to be delegated to replace some [HP](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/leoglossary-hive-power-hp) delegations I have and which will no longer be needed (as HP delegations).

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