With hard fork 28 quickly approaching on November 19, 2025 I would like to announce that my witness node has been updated to hard fork compatible witness software version: 1.28.0 and share some of the changes I made to my witness since launching it in early February of 2025.
I have originally launched my witness on Azure cloud platform with the following specs:
Operating System: Linux (Ubuntu 22.04)
Software version: 1.27.7
Processor: Standard L8as v3 with 8 vCPUs
Memory: 64 GiB RAM
Storage: Premium SSD LRS, 1024 GiB
While launching witness on Azure was quick and easy I have discovered that I do not have enough control over the platform changes and it costs more to run in Azure cloud then my on-prem solution. Therefore I made a decision to move my witness onto my own hardware.
My current witness node has the following specs:
Operating System: Linux (Ubuntu 22.04)
Software version: 1.28.0
Processor: Intel Core i7 2.4GHz 8 Core(s) 16 Logical Processor(s)
Memory: 64 GiB RAM
Storage: Samsung NVMe, 1024 GiB
I am running my witness node now at home with power backup and 1 Gig Fiberoptic connection.
I am currently waiting for my new hardware to arrive for the new witness node and plan to make my current hardware witness a backup witness. I am also planning to upgrade to the newest version of Witness software once my new hardware is setup with Ubuntu 24.04
Hard fork 27 witness software had Ubuntu 22.04 as a recommended operating system for witness software versions v.1.27.xx, but hard fork 28 witness software seems to recommend Ubuntu 24.04 LTS:
I will be also upgrading to the latest version of Hive Witness software which might be 1.28.4 our higher as I see 1.28.4-rc0 in the works already:
To provide reliable service as a witness Hive witnesses should stay informed of the latest changes, monitor and maintain their witness node.
Above is the official documentation changes in hard fork 28. There is one change that is most relevant to general user base on Hive and that is a new voting system.
Now Voting power will remain consistent until fully depleted as opposed to the current system where each subsequent vote has less power. The rationale for this change is that it makes the experience more intuitive for users.
While most of the work to prepare for the Hard Fork 28 is going to be done by Hive Witness Node operators there are a couple things that Hive stakeholders can do to make the hard fork 28 go more smoothly:
Why would the witness votes matter during Hard Fork?
The reason is because some Hive witnesses are actually harmful to the Hive blockchain as they are no longer running but they are enabled and get put into the rotation to validate Hive blocks.
When you setup your witness you are supposed to send a transaction to Hive blockchain that basically says that you are an active witness now. When you decide to stop witnessing or you have only one node and you are doing maintenance you are supposed to send another transaction that set's your node as inactive. For some reason we have some Hive nodes that are no longer working, but they were not set as inactive, so they keep missing blocks.
When their turn comes the blockchain waits for a certain time and then they miss the block and their block is passed on to the next scheduled witness. This creates a delay on Hive block processing and is not a good thing.
View and update your Hive Witness votes here: https://peakd.com/me/witnesses
So you should really remove your vote from those types of witnesses and you will be helping Hive blockchain run more smoothly. By the way, Hive Hard Fork 28 will not fix this problem it is likely to make the problem worse as those who will not upgrade in time will start missing blocks, only you as a voter can fix this, thus my second point of reviewing what is going on on November 19th and on.
Here is an example of the witnesses that are missing blocks for years now:
Cryptobrewmaster has been missing all blocks for 380 days now and it is still fairly high ranked at 91st position
Hiq.witness has missed all blocks for the last 252 days (mouse over the block number and it will tell you when last block was validated)
And there are more, here are 3 more that have been missing blocks for years for example:
You can find which witnesses are missing blocks and are still scheduled to process blocks here: https://hive.arcange.eu/witnesses/
With nine days to go until the Hard Fork 28 there are even some consensus witnesses who have not upgraded yet, but I am sure they will upgrade, it is those below top 20 who are more likely to become a problem and if a lot of them miss the deadline to upgrade their software that might potentially result in a lot of blocks being passed on to the next scheduled witness and that could result in some slowness.
You can see the countdown to the Hard Fork 28 at: https://hive.io/
That is all for my witness update and hopefully the Hard Fork 28 is going to go smoothly with no major issues.
