It is recommended to have a hardware NAND Flasher and a backup of your NAND before proceeding. Nonetheless, we advise to stay put until the dust settles, and official confirmation is given from the PS3Xploit team. Additionally LuanTeles, over at psx-place says the 4.87 HEN works after minimal config changes: Multiple people have confirmed that this HFW works.
Joonie has shared instructions on how to build a Hybrid Firmware (HFW) for 4.88 (basically has all of the 4.88 functionality but brings back the required exploit to run the HEN), which Zecoxao has released based on those instructions. Prominent PS3Xploit team member Esc0rtD3w has confirmed that this change does not impact lv2 kernel or vsh (good news), and it looks like a port of the HEN is just a matter of time. In other words, they are hard at work to release an update, but there’s no 100% guarantee just yet, so the best bet is to stay patient. However, hackers are hopeful that this update will not impact the HEN long term. What’s really impactful of course is that this breaks the current Homebrew Enabler on PS3 consoles, which is why you shouldn’t update just yet. This system software update improves system performance. (Possibly just an update of the Blu-Ray keys). Firmware 4.88, released half a year after 4.87 (December last year), is as cryptic as ever when it comes to the actual content of the update. In a somewhat surprising (but not unheard of) move for a discontinued console, Sony have released a firmware update for the PS3.