I am not a troll but I honestly don't understand how it's possible to start paying masternodes from block rewards without hardfork.
We already had the hardfork to start paying them, but then had to switch them off temporarily. The fix & switching back on doesn't need a hardfork.
But wasn't that temporal shutdown carried out by a (yet another, very quick) hardfork just like the earlier start of the payments was?
How does the network know if masternodes should be paid or not?
pool updates probably.