The reality is with any software development project is that requirements do change.
When NEX began, the thought was to just build a industrial quality Nxt. That is, 8 decimal point precision, non-truncated transaction hashes, merkle roots and bitcoin style addresses.
However, we soon discovered that there is much bigger gap in crypto-currencies that all 2nd generation coins are not addressing. To be done correctly, this needs to be addressed at the core and cannot be programmed in after the fact.
There is always an advantage to be first, but sometimes that can be a disadvantage. It is called the 'Inventor's Dillema'. That is when you make mistakes that cannot be fixed. Now that there has been 5 years of Bitcoin, we are beginning to realize where it has problems and building a solution to address these.
