Well boys and girls, it happened.
Hive is alive and running. The Steem blockchain was forked after a month long dispute with Justin Sun. This resulted in many of the developers in the community getting together and forking the blockchain.
At 10:00 AM EST, the first blocks of Hive were run. The entire history of Steem, up until the fork, is contained in two blockchains. From the fork block forward, there will be two chains.
This day was filled with a number of obstacles after the fork took place.
In this post, I want to state to everyone that it is best to relax. In my view, we are at the absolute bottom. From this point forward, things will only get better.
There is no doubt that starting a new chain, even with the history of Steem still intact, was going to be a step backwards. The move was going to cause a disruption for all involved. This could not be avoided.
In the quest for decentralization, we have to accept that time is required. There are a lot of projects that will end up on Hive. At present, we just have to give the development teams behind each project some time to get things lined up. Across the board, there are hiccups.
That said, I am highly confident that these issues will be resolved one-by-one. Thus, we can view this situation as the bottom. From this point forward, things will only get better.
The biggest benefit that I see with Hive is the fact that the power of numbers can work in our favor. With so many project teams out there, each is working on improving what is in their realm.
With each resolved issue, the ecosystem gets stronger. At 10 AM, things were a mess. Since that time, more nodes have come online while the witness nodes starting processing blocks. This is the most basic activity on the blockchain and we have it going.
Part of the transition is each of us signing in the new front ends. Steem Keychain is a very popular extension that many use to sign into Steem front ends. Unfortunately, at this time, it does not work on Hive.
It is available on Github and 
@themarkymark/how-to-install-hive-keychain
Over the next couple days, I expect a great many updates from all the different projects as to their course of action. I was in touch with a couple on discord and they told me they are working those a number of different things and will release an update very soon.
In the meantime, a couple of basics that will help everyone to get started:
Hive.blog is the Hive version of Steemit.com.
Peakd.com is the Hive version of Steempeak.com
These are very exciting times in the blockchain/cryptocurrency world. The push for decentralization is upon us and, I believe, this was an enormous step in that direction.
The next few weeks should see many improvements as the different projects update things to properly align how they wish.
In my mind, this will only benefit users.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.
