Hello there, I would like to quickly introduce myself properly and explain some concerns I have about what's occurring.

My name is Daniel and I'm a 40-year old mechanic from the UK. I came to steemit in September 2016 and posted under the name @dogtanian (this was my first account that I lost my password to). Since August 2017 I have been posting regularly under the name @article61. Over the past 3 and a half years I've seen quite a lot and made some fantastic connections on the steem blockchain. My heart is truly embedded in this community and the people here have had a profound effect on my life. You have shown me that there is a place for people like me, people who understand what it means to be free and who have no desire to follow the herd. I thank you all for making this place so vibrant and full of energy, even the ones who've instigated the drama. Most of all, I thank you for giving me a place to express myself.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, I am a mechanic. I'm a decent mechanic and by no means a simpleton. However, when it comes to blockchains, nodes and atomic swaps I struggle to keep up. What I have managed to learn is enough to keep my head above water. I know to keep my keys safe, which one to use and when to use them. I've learnt how to trade crypto's and subsequently how to lose them ;) In the past all this was enough to keep me in the loop but lately things have sped up and, in all honesty, I feel like I'm falling behind.

With the introduction of Communities and Tokens I feel as if I've missed the boat slightly. When the steem community was all in one place it was simple, certainly not perfect but it was simple. Now there are several frontends, a thousand different tokens, tribes, hives and a multitude of communities. I will admit that my lack of connection is due to my own complacency and it is up to me to put more in if I want more out.

The recent disruption caused by @ned selling us out to Justin Sun has been quite traumatic. It really does feel like the landlord has sold the house and I'm ready to be evicted. Fortunately though, this has had an unexpected effect and has prompted me to become much more proactive around the chain. The first thing I've done is reset my witness votes in order to keep the right witnesses in governance. The second thing I've done, and this is a very big one, is to dump steemit.com and begin using an alternative frontend. I had dabbled in the past and on my smartphone I do use the esteem dapp, but very rarely to post with. On my laptop is where I steem the most and now I do this from STEEMPEAK rather than steemit.com. This has been a great move and something I should have done a while ago. Just in the last two days I've been checking out and joining in with various communities, although I still don't quite understand the mechanics I'm sure I'll get the hang of it soon.

In short, I feel like I'm catching up with things and soon I hope to be up to speed. That being said, I still have some questions and concerns about the future and I would like your help in answering them...

Things I understand

@blocktrades have recently announced that there will be a hardfork and that this will be happening sooner rather than later. The way I understand things is that the consequences of this will create a new token and, for all intents and purposes, a new blockchain(or maybe it's a sister chain, I'm not quite sure). The newcommunity/token will be named "Hive", which I think is a great name and I am 100% on board.
The community, devs, and many witnesses - which is what I consider to be the beating heart of steem - is on board with this hardfork and I am very pleased about this unified approach.
Justin Sun is an arsehole
Justin Sun is going take over the top 20 witnesses eventually and create a hardfork to allow him to remove his stake and, in turn, trade this on the exchange. Now, I may be wrong about this point, but that seems like another sell-wall that will stop SBD/STEEM token increasing in price. Besides, this will make Justin all powerful and I guess he'll attempt to move the community over to TRON along with the token. If this is so, it sounds to me as if @blocktrades hardfork and Justin's hardfork have the same outcome, except with @blocktrades hardfork it will be one we control and also advantageous as we can free ourselves of some heavy baggage i.e ninja mined stake.
@ned is a guitar playing arsehole (But remember, he "loves us"...hmmm)

Things I DO NOT understand

I've recently started to power down and once that's done I would like some advice on what I should do next, or if I should even be powering down? From a recent MSPwaves broadcast, I heard that some big players are not really that keen on moving over to Hive and that they wish to stick it out on the current chain. So, should I be hedging my bets in the hope that the steem blockchain thrives? To me that seems contradictory to what has been said, and a lot of what's being said is from those who are saying they want to stick around??? I thought the whole reason behind this fork was because we are certain Justin Sun is going to trash the chain or turn steem into a dictatorship. If it is going to be a dictatorship then I'm happy to sell my stake and exchange it for the new Hive token, but there does seem to be some confusion here.
The creators of Hive have stated that there is to be a "snapshot" of our accounts and I just want to make sure this is a simple as it sounds. Am I right in thinking they just want us to take a screenshot of our wallets and send it to them so they can carry out a 1-2-1 deposit of the new token into our new accounts?
What about all that's been built so far? Will STEEMPEAK be migrating, or at least offering a facility to post on Hive? And what about the dapps? Splinterlands, Tastesteem, esteem, palnet and all the others, are they migrating too, or are we seeing our own version of Splinterlands playing out in our own community?? Furthermore, it would be nice to know that my favourite communities are going to be on Hive, communities like @steemclub-uk, @familyprotection, @informationwar etc etc...
I'm guessing that our security keys on Hive will work the same and when the time comes our new accounts will automatically create a new set of three keys that differ from our steem keys. Clarification on this would be great and I'd also like to know if the keychain feature will be available on Hive?
Finally, I would like to know if Hive will have the same reputation feature as steem does and, if so, will that mirror our steem rep or will we be starting from scratch? I really don't mind either way and the thought of starting from scratch is quite exciting, plus it makes it feel like we're all starting from the same point.