Having been on steemit for over a year now I have seen many a hardfork. It was roundabouts hardfork 18 that I started to do animations.
Hardfork 18 was the one which changed the payout period from 24 hours to 7 days and at the time caused much wailing and nashing of teeth. There were many self combusting rage quits.
An unexpected consequence of this for most users was the resetting of the rewards pool. We then had to wait almost a month before payouts started returning to normal.
Users left in droves at the time, low payouts and a low steem price made them flee. Others went on strike.
It was about this time that I started turning my attention to the next hardfork. Hardfork 19. I wanted to do an animation to make light of the dread that people were experiencing for the next one.
I decided to make hardfork 19 a character. Given the reaction against the last fork I knew he had to be a villain. But what kind?
It was the term consensus that nailed it for me. In order for a hardfork to be implemented a certain number of witnesses had to be in consensus for it to be done. The term reminded me of the Daleks from Dr Who. I decided to make my animated character a clumsy, murderous, box-like robot who's catchphrase was consensus. His name was HF-19.
My first attempt was this one.
I had a whale of a time doing it. Laser eyes!! It was my longest and best one yet. Everyone seemed to like it too.
There was a long wait till hardfork 19 and news came out that the rewards curve was to be flattened into a more linear progression.
It gave me an idea for my murderous buddy. After all he was good at flattening things.
Ouch, that was a sore one!
Eventually the reward pool started to fill up. Steemians became happier. There was no news on the arrival of the hardfork. Some people were nervous. Again I tapped into this and decided to bring him out HF-19 for another jaunt.
This one took a lot of work and to top it off I decided on a cheeky wink from our villain. I also got to include skulls, always a favourite!
There is always the worry that people will take offense and sure enough I was accused of spreading FUD with that one. Fortunately enough people saw the funny side for me to carry on.
The thought of spreading FUD made me chuckle. I have only ever done these things to raise a laugh not for people to genuinely think I was a terror-monger.
So with the hardfork date announced and my tongue firmly in cheek. I made the last one for HF-19.
Aw, isn't he a sweetheart! Flowers for the little girl.
HF-19 is still one of my favourites. So it wasn't quite the end of him and he might appear in future too.
So you had best sleep with one eye open because...
