### I told @drakos that I thought it was too soon to fork:

![too-soon-to-fork.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSBmMo5eCjxxXcpQWfacWPRPAAXWDxsoFEjuLuVJGDQ8k/too-soon-to-fork.png)

My comment 5 days ago about delaying HF20:
https://steemit.com/witness-update/@intelliguy/re-drakos-to-fork-or-not-to-fork-20180921t192903448z

_....and it turns out I was right._

In technology, when you disrupt your userbase... you don't follow through with your next upgrade immediately. People are still recovering from the last outage.

**You have to bring some [homeostasis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis) to the platform.**

HF20 could have been delayed until it was tested further.

Every time steem goes down -- what are we learning?

## ...and this replay thing --- needs to be re-engineered. I highly suggest this be done next.

* I discussed some possibilities with Luke Stokes here:

* https://steemit.com/witness-category/@intelliguy/re-lukestokes-re-intelliguy-re-lukestokes-witness-update-15-hours-in-front-of-a-computer-in-puerto-rico-20180919t010246162z

**So my open letter to Steemit is simply this:**

## If outages are going to occur... you can't have your witness nodes "replaying" old blocks from genesis for 5 or 6 hours... it's just ridiculous.

Want to make some major changes?  How about getting rid of the replay procedure for blocks that have already reached consensus.

See this comment thread:

https://steemit.com/witness-category/@intelliguy/re-lukestokes-re-intelliguy-re-lukestokes-witness-update-15-hours-in-front-of-a-computer-in-puerto-rico-20180919t010246162z

___

Now consider, when there is a bad release version, and an "emergency update"... this is usually the flow:

1) HF takes effect
2) Witnesses release something is wrong
3) They downgrade or upgrade and then replay (5-6 hour delay)
4) They then see if that worked.  If not...
5) They downgrade or upgrade and then replay (5-6 hour delay)

That's 10 hours of replaying... that is unnecessary when doing emergency upgrades.

That 10 hours is going to increase as the blockchain gets bigger.  By creating a "snapshot" archive of the first 2 years of steem... you should never have to replay that initial period.

That snapshot can reach consensus by all nodes "once".

Keep in mind, once a witness node has downloaded its own version of the immutable blockchain, it should trust _itself_ and what it has...  Why does it need to do this AGAIN?  That's blockchains -- they are immutable history that can't be changed.  Why do they need to re-verify something that can't be changed once they have it?

I'm an unpaid steem person, with no delegation by massive whales for my thoughts, and my intelliwitness node had to be shut down due to financial reasons at the current time.  It's too bad I couldn't be more involved.  My free advice is going to be limited.

The one steem fork that seems to appreciate me is https://whaleshares.io -- I'll end up saving my greatest ideas for them.