Founded in 2013, NXT is a ‘second generation’ blockchain platform that doubles as a cryptocurrency and also a payment network. It wasfounded by an anonymous software developer who is only known as BCNext. Itsblockchain uses the proof-of-stake mechanism to confirm transactions. NXT was initially conceived to act as a flexible platform where developers can build applications and financial services.

Interestingly, NXT came about as its developers experimented with the blockchain trying to expand the number of things that could be done using the nascent technology.

What Makes NXT Special

As we have mentioned above, NXT is a ‘second generation’ blockchain in that it doubles as a cryptocurrency and as a platform where applications can be built. This is unlike Bitcoin which only serves as currency. After Bitcoin was launched, there were some imitations of it and forks that came up however NXT was the first platform to break from the trend. It was completely written from scratch in Java.

It also introduced the idea of building applications on the blockchain. Even though it’s frequently compared to Ethereum, it was the first blockchain platform to present the Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol that doesn’t involve energy-intensive mining.

Compared to other platforms it has more restrictive APIs and components when creating blockchain applications. It also claims to be more secure from buggy codes and hackers. It offers app developers powerful toolkit and also any easy to use system where they can create a feature-rich environment. Some of the features include voting systems, data cloud, third-party plugins, asset exchange, monetary system, and authentication.

How NXT Came About

Anonymous Bitcointalk.org member BCNext created a forum thread on September 28, 2013, where he announced he was launching NXT as a next-generation cryptocurrency. Later on, a white paper was released that supported the project and then an ICO was held. The ICO was one of the first in the cryptocurrency world at the time. It managed to raise 21 Bitcoins which were worth $6,000 at the time.

The fundraising efforts concluded towards the end of 2013, and the first block was published. A billion coins were distributed to 73stakeholders proportionally according to how much they had contributed to the project. The following year in April the full source code was released. Since then many other developers and collaborators have added to the code.

Eventually, the core developers of the project formed a legal entity known as Jelurida , a startup that has its offices in the Netherlands. Since then they are in charge of developing the platform and they hold the IP rights to the technology. As the developers worked on various arising problems, they realized that new creative solutions were necessary and this led them to create Ardor, an evolution of NXT.

A Brief look at Ardor

The main area where Ardor has improved the NXT protocol is in the development of the parent-child architecture. The parent-child usually is responsible for network security and processing while the child chains maintain operational functions which are vital to the success of the currency.

The developers intended for Ardor to be an elegant complement of NXT. They also planned that the two coexist together. The first child chain on the Ardor platform is Ignis, and it helps address bloat issues. This happens by allowing data to be ‘pruned’ away on a preset schedule.

In 2017, NXT holders were awarded Ardor tokens using the snapshot mechanism. On December 28 users of NXT also received 0.5 IGNIS per every NXT token they had. When the Ardor mainnet was launched on January 1,2018 , the Ignis token was availed for use within the NXT wallet.

NXT Strengths

NXT also has many strengths. As of the time of writing, NXThas a market cap of $27 million according to coinmarketcap.com. It trades for $0.027 and occupies position 106 on the charts. It has also been in existence for over five years, and it’s still going strong. It has a strong community and a solid foothold in the business world. Add a strong development team, and you see why the project is very enticing.

The platform also cuts out intermediaries and allows users access to the world of decentralized trading and exchanges. It makes the process of digital assets creation simple which in turn makes crowd funding easier.

The Roadmap For NXT

The team behind the NXT project had several milestones to meet in 2018 including translation of wallet to 14 languages by the second quarter. In the third quarter, there were plans to add Java 9 support and the ability port transaction vouchers from Ardor. In the fourth quarter, there were plans to commence permission layer for NXT private blockchains.

Also, there are some plans for the first quarter of 2019 where there will be support for lightweight contracts ported from Ardor.