Announcing Ardor, or Nxt 2.0!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1518497.0

No, it was discussed and decided this would just not be right to do.

While an ICO might help the team, it just cannot be justified for the devs.

We're very actively pursuing other sources of funding like technology grants and the like, but we'll not tax the users with an ICO.

As you can see in the plan though is that 50% of the first child chain will be retained for IT and business development for now: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1483227.0

This is a child chain, so no tokens on the main chain will be given to the devs or any organisation. The only way to acquire those is by just holding Nxt.

This is child chains, yes.


We'll update about this once we have this completely clear. We are contacting the exchanges, yes.
We'll give you clear communication about this.

The Nxt core dev team is letting anyone get into the blockchain space with a new child chain platform, Ardor, which will incorporate the technologies proven for years by the Nxt 1.0 cryptocurrency and blockchain. Soon, anyone will be able to create their own solutions using the blockchain technology with the Ardor child chains.

Nxt is undergoing a dramatic evolution. Research by the Nxt team has led to Ardor, a platform that uses child chains and incorporates all of Nxt's latest blockchain innovations while being backed by the core developers of Nxt. Ardor is more than just about money: It's about making a blockchain platform that is open to everyone, from single users all the way up to FinTech startups and governments, and one where anyone can create their own child chain and interact with the whole blockchain ecosystem. That means anyone, anywhere, will be able to utilize blockchain services with relative ease.

We can't give away too much until the final features of Ardor are tested repeatedly.

But, here are a few of the features coming with the new Ardor release:

1. Offering Blockchain as a Service - Ardor will open blockchain development to organizations and individuals across the world. The high barriers to getting started with blockchain are about to vanish.

2. Manageable Blockchain Size - Ardor will solve the problem of scalability by separating transactions and data that do not affect security from those that do, and moving all of those that don't affect security onto child chains. The Ardor team will create the first child chain to house many Nxt 1.0 tools as well as future features. This small size also comes with short transaction times so processes need only a fraction of time compared to Bitcoin to execute functions.

3. A Decentralized Asset Exchange - Building off of the Asset Exchange on Nxt, Ardor will enable the ability to trade assets on any child chain for any of the child chain tokens. This allows child chains to interact with each other and opens up numerous opportunities for collaboration as well as allow cross chain asset trading, a long-requested feature within the Nxt ecosystem.

4. Decentralized Voting and Governance Systems - Ardor will be at the core of decentralized consensus in the future. Secure and anonymous voting will be an available feature on all child chains as it is on the Nxt platform.

5. Phased Transactions - Users can set multiple conditions before a transaction is executed, such as a minimum number of votes and a set amount of time. Like Nxt, Ardor will use Smart Transactions. With this, users will only need to submit the parameters necessary for the transaction and the ID of the functionality they want to use. The transaction process is also completely decentralized. No centralized server, service, or application, like Ethereum’s Oracle, is needed.

“Rather than providing smart contracts, NXT is focused on implementing the important use cases and functions directly into the core of both Nxt and Ardor. This approach has proven to be scalable and secure and will become more so when Ardor is released” – Riker

These are a few of the things Ardor will give you and the cryptocurrency community. As development continues and testing is finalized, you'll get a detailed analysis of each of the new tools, as well as the core features built into Ardor. We'll also reveal, step-by-step, a list of our partners and what they're doing with our technology.

This is all possible because of new developments within the Nxt community. Decision-making and planning is becoming more professionalized. The community and team structure are adjusting to the new demands while the Nxt and Ardor technology remains entirely open source. Ardor is more than a cryptocurrency - it's a blockchain platform specifically designed to let anyone build decentralized tools with the latest innovations in blockchain technology.

How to get Ardor

You'll be able to participate in Ardor right away. As Ardor continues testing and development, Nxt 1.9 will be released. With Nxt 1.9, you'll get your first chance to own a piece of Ardor. All those who hold an amount of NXT will also get a piece of Ardor. Snapshots will start be taken on an hourly basis, starting on July 14th to October 13th. Then, your total NXT will be averaged, and you'll receive that amount in Ardor tokens on October 13th, which will be freely tradeable up until the Ardor system launches.

At block 1,000,000 on October 13th, 2016, snapshotting will stop, and you'll be allowed to trade your Ardor tokens in NXT 1.9 in preparation for the launch of the Ardor blockchain.

After Ardor has launched, Nxt 1.0 will remain active and supported. Nxt 1.0 is the giant on which Ardor is built and it will remain running as a core component of the Nxt eco-system, functioning as a complete blockchain solution in its own right, as well as assisting in the development and refinement of the Ardor blockchain platform.

There'll be a lot more news in the weeks and months to come. Ardor aims to be a powerful platform for users and businesses alike by building on the technology pioneered by Bitcoin and Nxt. If you would like to be a part of it, acquire NXT now and get your stake in Ardor!

About

Ardor is brought to you by the core development team from Nxt. After years of building and testing the Nxt platform, the team is going to involve the public even more. As the first Blockchain 2.0 platform, the community has continually improved Nxt and now looks forward to release Ardor for companies, organizations, and of course, users.

Edit: for more information on the Roadmap, please go here: http://nxt.org/roadmap/

Articles:

Forbes: "DIY Blockchain? NXT Announces Customizable Ardor Platform"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2016/06/21/nxt-crypto-blockchain-team-prepares-ardor-scalable-child-chain-platform/#793b66ac349b

Cointelegraph: "Ardor - New Competitor to Ethereum Arises Amidst Reports of The DAO Attack"
http://cointelegraph.com/news/ardor-new-competitor-to-ethereum-arises-amidst-reports-of-the-dao-attack

Poloniex, BTC38, and Bittrex agree to distribute Ardor tokens to customers
http://www.econotimes.com/Poloniex-BTC38-and-Bittrex-agree-to-distribute-Ardor-tokens-to-customers-232665

NXT/Ardor Platform to Make Blockchain Cheaper and Safer
https://cointelegraph.com/news/nxtardor-platform-to-make-blockchain-cheaper-and-safer


Nxt Foundation is now a member of the Linux Foundation
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2016/07/linux-foundation-welcomes-open-source-experts-security-cloud-and

FXT (staking token) will be distributed at a 1:1 ratio
FNX (transaction token on the first child chain) will be distributed at a 1:0,5 ratio.

Both will have a 1 billion supply

Buy and hold during the three month snapshotting period that will start with the release of the 1.9 version of Nxt.
The Testnet version of this version is about to be released.

The snapshots will be taken at regular intervals and the average of Nxt in accounts will be used to calculate FXT distribution.

This is done to mitigate a possible run out of Nxt Assets into Nxt.

There is talk of adding a counter in the official wallet to show the amount of FXT that you will receive once the snapshot period ends, but I haven't received definitive information on this yet.

I will post more once I know it. Please ask questions if you have them

Not like the ones most people are used to.

If you hold Nxt, you will get the FXT (staking token) asset.

So each Nxt is a ticket to get FXT. You will have to accumulate Nxt to get FXT (while still keeping the Nxt, of course. There is no burning or anything like that)

Thank you for your positive remarks, and even for the less positive ones.

They are to be expected, and one cannot please everyone.

As to funding and the name: both are being worked on.

We already know for quite some time that the name Nxt is less than ideal. The community on Nxt Forums has been discussing this for months now, so nice to see that it's been noticed.

Funding: of course we are on this, via multiple channels. We have just partnered with an incubator in Amsterdam and are chasing (we are way past exploring) many other avenues.

Funding doesn't need to come from crypto only. I personally have gone on record many times that crypto tends to be very provincial sometimes and seems to like to live in a bubble of like-minded people.

That's just not constructive and useful, and also harmful.

At this moment, the date to watch out for is the release of 1.9 to mainnet.

Once this version goes live, it will be the start of the three months snapshot period. More detailed information on this process will follow, but it boils down to an averaging of your Nxt holdings for distribution of the FXT token at the end of this period.

The Nxt foundation wants to welcome a new member:


https://nxtforum.org/news-and-announcements/nxt-foundation-new-member-introducing-myself/

The FNX chain will be as Nxt 1.x with the added benefits of being on the Nxt 2.0 platform.

Nxt 1.x will in this plan only be supported with bugfixes and general support, but work on new features will be done on 2.0. However, if other devs want to work on 1.x, this is still possible. The core team just doesn't have the man hours to do both.


Yes and yes.

They will get Fnxt (now FXT) ata 1:1 ratio based on a three month snapshot period (they will receive assets representing them which will be freely tradeable) and will receive FNX (the Nxt 2.0 tokens if you will) at a 1:0,5 ratio at the time of launch of mainnet 2.0.

Sorry, but this needs to be corrected.

Nxt 1.x will remain and will continue to be supported.

Nxt 2.0 is a new chain, that is split into a main chain (which will validate using FXT) and many child chains (the first of which will be using FNX as transactional token).

Nxt 1.x and 2.0 will have no direct relation on a blockchain.

Nxt 1.x is not being abandoned, but it will not receive new features from the core team. It will get bugfixes and updates that are required for safety and maintenance.
This does not mean new devs could not take on this project, though.

I'd say that this is an assumption and may well be wrong.

Nxt 1.x will be supported for at least a year after mainnet 2.0 launches (until Q2 2018).

Personally, I think it still has plenty of options and could probably be useful.

Discarding old stuff is not always a good idea.

Conversely, it might even be taken over by a completely new set of devs.

To say it's going to just fade out is premature.

For now, keep them where you like.

The snapshot proces will start with the mainnet version of Nxt NRS 1.9, which is still a while away.

The Nxt Foundation is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Civic Tech Amsterdam.

Nxt Foundation, one of the pioneers of the emerging blockchain industry, has formed an alliance with the internationally oriented Civic Tech, which specialises in technology business acceleration and international funding.

Civic Tech has worked with such institutions as the World Bank, the European Union's Horizon program and the Amsterdam IoT Living Lab.
The Nxt Foundation believes that together Civic Tech and Nxt can form a successful strategic partnership to expand the uses of the Nxt blockchain technology, as well as secure funding for further research and development into blockchain/cryptocurrency based systems.

CivicTech has a strong background in urban development, and according to Katalin Gallyas, CivicTech founder: “Nxt offers a great mix of disruptive features that can be incorporated into the Smart City urban experience of the future:  voting, funds control, value transfer. Blockchain can offer a lot to us and to our other projects across Europe.”

Download this PR here.

Keeping your coins in your own wallet is definitely preferable.
Downloading the Nxt1 wallet should be the default.
We'll be working with the exchanges to make sure people won't miss out, though.

Roadmap of Nxt 2.0

Edit: FXT has been named Ardor! More info here: https://nxtforum.org/core-development-announcements/(ann)-ardor-or-nxt-2-0-a-scalable-child-chain-platform/


Announcing Ardor (Nxt 2.0), the successor to the pioneering Nxt platform, which has been an inspiration for many other successful blockchain projects.

Ardor builds on the experience we have gained from running Nxt 1.0 in production for over two and a half years, and aims to solve real world problems of scalability, privacy, currency liquidity and usability.

Ardor retains all the core features of the first version of the Nxt Blockchain, but builds and expands on Nxt 1.0 by adding secure and scalable child chains. This new flexible architecture allows users to create their own blockchains, customised to fit their needs, while drawing security from the collective ecosystem of the global Ardor platform.

Ardor is being built by a very experienced and professional developer team. The same team that built the first true Proof of Stake system, that implemented the first decentralised token trading system, the first and only fully decentralised coin shuffling implementation among many other groundbreaking features for cyryprocurrency/blockchain.

The Nxt core team has been consistently innovative since the original Nxt launch back in 2013, and many Nxt innovations have been incorporated into other projects.


The initial research phase of Ardor has passed. Pooling their experience of working on Nxt 1.0 for over two years, Core devs Jean-Luc, Riker, ScripterRon and Petko have already started the first phase of coding for Ardor.
Coding Ardor will take time. The Core Team does not want to launch an overhyped and half-finished system, but wants to make sure the new platform holds up to the high standards you have come to expect from Nxt 1.0. We consider this  to be the de-facto reference standard of stability and performance that a blockchain platform should adhere to.

Initial coding has started a few weeks ago and is expected to take at least the rest of 2016.

Testnet
At the time of writing, the Core Team aims to launch the first version of the Ardor Testnet very early in 2017. During the Testnet phase of the software, there will be many rewrites and tweaks based on user feedback and continuous use of the platform. The Testnet phase will last for at least six months to make absolutely sure the first live version will be safe and trustworthy at launch.

Mainnet
At the time of writing, it is estimated that the first live version of Ardor will launch in Q3 of 2017.

More details on the implementation cycle can be found in this thread. (Document also available for download HERE)


Ardor will retain ALL Features of the Nxt 1.0 platform.

Below you will find an outline on how each current feature will be ported to the new FNX Child Chain at launch.

Account Numbers
Account numbers are preserved. Since the mapping from secret phrase, to public key, to account id will not change, your 1.0 pass phrase will correspond to the account with the exact same number on Ardor. Existing 1.0 users will be able to login to Ardor with their existing passphrase.
The Account table will be global, and each account can have balances in any of the Child Chain tokens, as well as in Ardor.

Assets
Existing Nxt 1.0 Assets or Asset Transaction History will NOT be ported directly to the FNX Child Chain.
Since the Nxt 1.0 blockchain will continue to exist, the Core Team believes it is better to leave the choice of when and how to move to Nxt 2.0 in the hands of the Asset Issuers themselves.
This is probably best done by burning existing Assets, requiring them to be sent to the issuer account in order to issue new Nxt 2.0 Assets in exchange. Or it could be done by each asset issuer declaring a height at which they will take a snapshot of 1.0 asset balances, and then re-distributing those on Ardor.
Assets will be universal on Ardor, which means that for any Asset, regardless on which Child Chain it was originally issued, any Child Chain that will allow its trade will be able to trade it.

MS Currencies
MS Currencies themselves are also universal, and will be possible to trade on any Child Chain. MS Currency names and codes existing in Nxt 1.0 WILL be ported to the FNX Child Chain, including the currency balances for all accounts. Their transaction history will not be.
The Core Team will provide support to any MS currencies that want to transition to a Child Chain, i.e. start a Child Chain with a token distribution based on this MS currency.
MS Currency names and codes will be unique within Child Chains only. This will eliminate the possibility of name squatting across chains. The proposed format for MS Currency names will be CURRENCYNAMECODE.CHILDCHAINCODE, for instance ELEMS.FNX.

Arbitrary Messages
No Messages will be ported from 1.0 to Ardor

Tagged Data
No Tagged Data will be ported from 1.0 to Ardor

Digital Goods
No products or sales will be ported from 1.0 to Ardor

Aliases
Existing 1.0 Nxt Aliases will be ported to the FNX Child Chain. Just like with MS Currency names and codes, alias names will be unique within their Child Chain only. Globally, aliases will be appended with a Child Chain suffix, to signify which chain they belong to. By default, alias name not appended with a Child Chain suffix will be assumed to belong to the FNX Child Chain.

Voting
Voting will be available on each Child Chain.
Open or finished Polls will NOT be ported to the Ardor chain. Running polls will need to finish on the Nxt 1.0 chain.

Phasing
Phasing will be available on each side chain.
Current Account Control Setting will NOT be ported to the new FNX Child Chain.

Leasing
Account Leasing will be retained, but on the FXT Main Chain only, as only FXT balances are used to provide blockchain security (forge). Existing 1.0 Leases will not be transferred but will have to be recreated.

Plugins
Ardor will support Plugins, but existing Plugins will need fixes to work with the new Ardor platform.


What will happen to 1.0?
The Nxt Core Devs are committed to providing support, bug fixes and any possible emergency updates for the Nxt 1.0 chain.
It will not be necessary to burn your 1.0 coins to receive Ardor tokens, and you are free to trade your Ardor Tokens which you will receive after the snapshot period has ended.

The Core Team wants to make migrations to Ardor as easy as possible, so is allowing a wide window for making this move.
In short, nothing will change for Nxt 1.0, except that active work on new features will come to a halt. The platform will be actively maintained, so users will still benefit from a secure and well-kept platform.
The Core Team will also provide help and support for users that wish to move their enterprises from Nxt 1.0 to Ardor.


Ardor’s prime innovation is to split the blockchain into a main chain that is used for consensus creation only, and multiple child chains that keep separate ledgers of transactions, each child chain using its own coin/token..

This means that there will initially be two distributions of tokens: one for the main chain token (Ardor), and one for the token for the first child chain to be launched (for now called FNX).

The Core Developers recognise the tremendous contributions of the investors and holders of the original Nxt 1.0, without whom Ardor would not be possible, and have decided to grant them exclusive rights to these new tokens.

It is important to note that Ardor does not mean Nxt 1.0 will cease to exist! The Core Team is committed to continue providing support to Nxt 1.0 for at least one year after the Ardor launch, and possibly further.

There will be no burning of Nxt 1.0 needed in order to receive either Ardor or FNX Tokens.

Distribution:

Ardor (Main Chain Tokens)
All NXT holders are eligible to receive Ardor Tokens at launch of the Mainnet.
Shortly after the release of Nxt 1.9, (intended to be the last major release on the Nxt 1.0 branch) the Nxt Software will start taking periodic snapshots of all users' NXT balances, at regular intervals (most likely once an hour), for a period of three months.
The NXT balances in each account will be averaged over this full three month period, and at the end all accounts will be automatically credited with a token representing their Ardor holdings, issued as an Asset on the Nxt asset exchange.
This Ardor Asset will be freely tradeable.
The distribution of the real Ardor coins (to be done at the launch of the Ardor Mainnet in Q3 2017) will be based on the ownership of Ardor Assets on the 1.9 blockchain, taken at the point of time when the Ardor Genesis block is created, shortly before that launch.

FNX (Transaction Tokens for the FNX Child Chain)
The distribution of the FNX Token will be based on each account’s NXT holdings at the time of the Ardor Genesis block creation.
At the time of writing, the Core Devs have decided to credit 50% of these holdings to each new FNX Account, while reserving 50% of FNX for funding of the development team, business development and other operations that will need funding to make the Ardor project a success.
The Core Devs acknowledge that not including this step in the distribution of 2013 was a mistake in the first place, which has left the project chronically underfunded. As a donation based model is not sustainable, they decided to opt for the allocation of 50% for project development and sustainability.

FXT is only distributed to people holding Nxt, so the only way to get those tokens is by holding Nxt in your account during the snapshot phase (which starts when Nxt 1.9 is released and will run for about 3 months).
After the snapshot phase, everyone will receive FXT Assets, which can be traded freely. When the Nxt 2.0 Genesis block is created, FXT will be allocated based on FXT Asset balance.

FNX will be created in the Genesis block of Nxt 2.0. At the moment Nxt holders will get 50% FNX of their Nxt balance. The other 50% will be reserved for the devs, for instance to do an ICO with, or something else. As this is still one year in the future, the exact method of this is still being debated.

The acronyms are just placeholders for now and not final.
There is quite some support for a rebrand in the community, so this is being seriously considered.

Roadmap of Nxt 2.0


Announcing Nxt 2.0, the successor to the pioneering Nxt platform, which has been an inspiration for many other successful blockchain projects.

Nxt 2.0 builds on the experience we have gained from running Nxt 1.0 in production for over two and a half years, and aims to solve real world problems of scalability, privacy, currency liquidity and usability.

Nxt 2.0 retains all the core features of the first version of the Nxt Blockchain, but builds and expands on Nxt 1.0 by adding secure and scalable child chains. This new flexible architecture allows users to create their own blockchains, customised to fit their needs, while drawing security from the collective ecosystem of the global Nxt 2.0 platform.

Nxt 2.0 is being built by a very experienced and professional developer team. The same team that built the first true Proof of Stake system, that implemented the first decentralised token trading system, the first and only fully decentralised coin shuffling implementation among many other groundbreaking features for cyryprocurrency/blockchain.

The Nxt core team has been consistently innovative since the original Nxt launch back in 2013, and many Nxt innovations have been incorporated into other projects.


The initial research phase of Nxt 2.0 has passed. Pooling their experience of working on Nxt 1.0 for over two years, Core devs Jean-Luc, Riker, ScripterRon and Petko have already started the first phase of coding for Nxt 2.0.
Coding Nxt 2.0 will take time. The Core Team does not want to launch an overhyped and half-finished system, but wants to make sure the new platform holds up to the high standards you have come to expect from Nxt 1.0. We consider this  to be the de-facto reference standard of stability and performance that a blockchain platform should adhere to.

Initial coding has started a few weeks ago and is expected to take at least the rest of 2016.

Testnet
At the time of writing, the Core Team aims to launch the first version of the Nxt 2.0 Testnet very early in 2017. During the Testnet phase of the software, there will be many rewrites and tweaks based on user feedback and continuous use of the platform. The Testnet phase will last for at least six months to make absolutely sure the first live version will be safe and trustworthy at launch.

Mainnet
At the time of writing, it is estimated that the first live version of Nxt 2.0 will launch in Q3 of 2017.

More details on the implementation cycle can be found in this thread. (Document also available for download HERE)


Nxt 2.0 will retain ALL Features of the Nxt 1.0 platform.

Below you will find an outline on how each current feature will be ported to the new FNX Child Chain at launch.

Account Numbers
Account numbers are preserved. Since the mapping from secret phrase, to public key, to account id will not change, your 1.0 pass phrase will correspond to the account with the exact same number on 2.0. Existing 1.0 users will be able to login to Nxt 2.0 with their existing passphrase.
The Account table will be global, and each account can have balances in any of the Child Chain tokens, as well as in FXT.

Assets
Existing Nxt 1.0 Assets or Asset Transaction History will NOT be ported directly to the FNX Child Chain.
Since the Nxt 1.0 blockchain will continue to exist, the Core Team believes it is better to leave the choice of when and how to move to Nxt 2.0 in the hands of the Asset Issuers themselves.
This is probably best done by burning existing Assets, requiring them to be sent to the issuer account in order to issue new Nxt 2.0 Assets in exchange. Or it could be done by each asset issuer declaring a height at which they will take a snapshot of 1.0 asset balances, and then re-distributing those on 2.0.
Assets will be universal on Nxt 2.0, which means that for any Asset, regardless on which Child Chain it was originally issued, any Child Chain that will allow its trade will be able to trade it.

MS Currencies
MS Currencies themselves are also universal, and will be possible to trade on any Child Chain. MS Currency names and codes existing in Nxt 1.0 WILL be ported to the FNX Child Chain, including the currency balances for all accounts. Their transaction history will not be.
The Core Team will provide support to any MS currencies that want to transition to a Child Chain, i.e. start a Child Chain with a token distribution based on this MS currency.
MS Currency names and codes will be unique within Child Chains only. This will eliminate the possibility of name squatting across chains. The proposed format for MS Currency names will be CURRENCYNAMECODE.CHILDCHAINCODE, for instance ELEMS.FNX.

Arbitrary Messages
No Messages will be ported from 1.0 to 2.0

Tagged Data
No Tagged Data will be ported from 1.0 to 2.0

Digital Goods
No products or sales will be ported from 1.0 to 2.0

Aliases
Existing 1.0 Nxt Aliases will be ported to the FNX Child Chain. Just like with MS Currency names and codes, alias names will be unique within their Child Chain only. Globally, aliases will be appended with a Child Chain suffix, to signify which chain they belong to. By default, alias name not appended with a Child Chain suffix will be assumed to belong to the FNX Child Chain.

Voting
Voting will be available on each Child Chain.
Open or finished Polls will NOT be ported to the 2.0 chain. Running polls will need to finish on the Nxt 1.0 chain.

Phasing
Phasing will be available on each side chain.
Current Account Control Setting will NOT be ported to the new FNX Child Chain.

Leasing
Account Leasing will be retained, but on the FXT Main Chain only, as only FXT balances are used to provide blockchain security (forge). Existing 1.0 Leases will not be transferred but will have to be recreated.

Plugins
Nxt 2.0 will support Plugins, but existing Plugins will need fixes to work with the new Nxt 2.0 platform.


What will happen to 1.0?
The Nxt Core Devs are committed to providing support, bug fixes and any possible emergency updates for the Nxt 1.0 chain.
It will not be necessary to burn your 1.0 coins to receive 2.0 tokens, and you are free to trade your FXT Tokens which you will receive after the snapshot period has ended.

The Core Team wants to make migrations to Nxt 2.0 as easy as possible, so is allowing a wide window for making this move.
In short, nothing will change for Nxt 1.0, except that active work on new features will come to a halt. The platform will be actively maintained, so users will still benefit from a secure and well-kept platform.
The Core Team will also provide help and support for users that wish to move their enterprises from Nxt 1.0 to 2.0.


Nxt 2.0’s prime innovation is to split the blockchain into a main chain that is used for consensus creation only, and multiple child chains that keep separate ledgers of transactions, each child chain using its own coin/token..

This means that there will initially be two distributions of tokens: one for the main chain token (for now called FXT), and one for the token for the first child chain to be launched (for now called FNX).

The Core Developers recognise the tremendous contributions of the investors and holders of the original Nxt 1.0, without whom Nxt 2.0 would not be possible, and have decided to grant them exclusive rights to these new tokens.

It is important to note that Nxt 2.0 does not mean Nxt 1.0 will cease to exist! The Core Team is committed to continue providing support to Nxt 1.0 for at least one year after the Nxt 2.0 launch, and possibly further.

There will be no burning of Nxt 1.0 needed in order to receive either FXT or FNX Tokens.

Distribution:

FXT (Main Chain Tokens)
All NXT holders are eligible to receive FXT Tokens at launch of the Mainnet.
Shortly after the release of Nxt 1.9, (intended to be the last major release on the Nxt 1.0 branch) the Nxt Software will start taking periodic snapshots of all users' NXT balances, at regular intervals (most likely once an hour), for a period of three months.
The NXT balances in each account will be averaged over this full three month period, and at the end all accounts will be automatically credited with a token representing their FXT holdings, issued as an Asset on the Nxt asset exchange.
This FXT Asset will be freely tradeable.
The distribution of the real FXT coins ( to be done at the launch of the Nxt 2.0 Mainnet in Q3 2017) will be based on the ownership of FXT Assets on the 1.9 blockchain, taken at the point of time when the 2.0 Genesis block is created, shortly before that launch.

FNX (Transaction Tokens for the FNX Child Chain)
The distribution of the FNX Token will be based on each account’s NXT holdings at the time of the Nxt 2.0 Genesis block creation.
At the time of writing, the Core Devs have decided to credit 50% of these holdings to each new FNX Account, while reserving 50% of FNX for funding of the development team, business development and other operations that will need funding to make the Nxt 2.0 project a success.
The Core Devs acknowledge that not including this step in the distribution of 2013 was a mistake in the first place, which has left the project chronically underfunded. As a donation based model is not sustainable, they decided to opt for the allocation of 50% for project development and sustainability.