Only NXT were stolen, as far as my facts go. So it was an attack on NXT specifically, not the exchange. Unless of course my facts are wrong...

The Exchanges polo,  btc38 and bittrex are assisting with the snapshots.  How they will distribute is for every exchange different, because most of them have 1 big account on Nxt and keep an own administered system for their internal "NXT " account holders. But these accounts exist only in the exchange. That is why its the exchange his responsibility to distribute the right amounts to the holders.

I will check with the nxt foundation contact for the latest info about it.

No need for pools to redistribute ARDR. Because one of the great things about Nxt is that you can lease your forging power without leasing your coins. So the coins stay on your account and you get the ARDR to your account although you are leasing the forging power of your coins.

There are no new coins in Nxt. Nxt has a fixed supply of coins (NXT). The coins gained by forging are the fees people pay to send transactions.

There are some inaccuracies here, but they've been addressed already by others. I'm going to address what I think is your main concern, that being...

"The possibilities of it finally breaking the barrier and entering the mainstream of the real world."

Here's the reality; That's already happened. There's an entire pseudo-economy in the crypto sphere worth, at a minimum, 10 billion USD, and probably a lot more given other factors involved.

Maybe you want to know when blockchain technology will have larger mainstream business applications.

Well, it already does. Consider the Russian use of NXT voting technology. Maybe you're interested in large corporate applications, like banks and multinationals.

That's an easy question to answer. Large banks won't use blockchains as we do... but they will license the technology. They'll contract the Nxt team. They'll want it adapted to their specific needs. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why these blockchains are superior compared to traditional databases as financial ledgers. But that's what they'll do. They'll license what they think is the best, most suitable technology and adapt it to their needs, and the R&D process for his selection is already going on  in Banking conglomerates worldwide. You need only ask them, and plenty have been public with their testing of blockchain technologies. If you want to talk about the specific benefits of blockchains versus private databases for financial institutions, that's a different question that should be handled in a different topic.

As for the actual users of the Nxt blockchain, who will they be?

In all likelihood, they'll be entrepreneurs. They'll be small business folk. They'll be people with great ideas and fantastic talent, but without the 100 million USD to spend that these banks and states have. And they'll need a place to build their vision. Some will need cryptocurrencies. Some will need assets. Some will need an easy way to build Smart Contracts.

Ardor will provide the ecosystem for all of them. And when 1, 2, or 3 of this horde of entrepreneurial projects succeed, that's when we'll see a sudden and dramatic collision of the crypto and mainstream business worlds.

And here's the truth: I don't know which entrepreneurial project will do that job. None of us do. We don't know which tools or technologies they'll need, or how they'll use them. That's why Ardor is refining all these different applications. Ardor sets the stage for them, creates the network infrastructure, and builds every tool they could possibly need.

Then it's up to us entrepreneurs to create amazing things and disrupt the behemoths.

I don't recall saying that anyone deserves to be stolen from in my post?? I just asked the question why anyone who is currently selling NXT care about Ardor? To me if they truly wanted the Ardor credit, the best and easiest way is to hold it until after the distribution and then sell. I agree with you that it's ultimately the exchanges responsibility to ensure distribution is done on their side, it's just to many moving parts where things can go wrong for me, so I feel safer with my funds in my personal NXT wallet. That way I'm sure to get my correct distribution and can use the funds to start foraging. I've been scammed for over $2,000 in BTC when I first started, so I definitely don't want anyone to loose money and feel how I did.

Back on subject-

I just setup my first NXT node on a raspberry pi 3 last night and it's finally sync'd to the block chain. The process was pretty easy and painless following the guide on the foundation blog, just having an issue getting the CRON job setup via the guide (Linux noob)...

My facts are quite straight. As usual. Your foregone conclusions on the other hand... First of all, it not clear, to this day, who and how the "theft" was perpetrated (there's plenty of literature about it in Google). Lin, the owner of Biter, is a piece of shit individual that was proven to be involved in several scams after that and it is strongly suspected that this "theft" was actually an inside job, as in most of the theft cases, is. And the purpose of the "theft", clearly, was an attack on NXT, not just steal as many coins as possible, much less BTC. BTC stolen is sure to "work", since no one is going to hard fork it where NXT could have done it easily -like Vericoin did just weeks before, for the same reason-, thus rendering the "theft" of no value whatsoever. So it was an attack on NXT and NXT was susceptible (all coins but BTC are) to that attack. Should it have affected more people -or more of the RIGHT people, or in bigger amount-, what would NXT have done? that's just up for speculation. Successful enterprises, the mainstream, conventional ones, are not open to such possibilities of attacks ... not to mention the security of networks sustained by the computers on the hands of people of... let's say a rather anarchist vision of the world, spread the world over? I'm sure you catch my point.

Why do you think Nxt 2.0 forging/child chain model is created? To have businesses operate their child blockchains secured by the forging chain. Ardor holders running the forging chain benefit from fees of businesses using child chains. You produce a lot of words, but you have grasped so little of the Nxt 2.0 concept.

I have been posting about this: The ARDOR thing is just a SCHEME (not to be mistaken for a scam). In actuality, without any exchange in "value", what Ardor means is a DOUBLING of the number of "coins" in Next. Pure and simply. Next, consequently, ceases of having any value as ARDOR is implemented. That is quite straightforward... where the very smart scheme comes in is AFTER the Ardor is distributed when your holdings in NXT still will entitle you to 0.5 (at least) of the (still unnamed) coin/token resulting from the sale of the first child chain. I repeat again: It is a very, very smart scheme that has already worked very well -as reflected in the price, that I believe has a potential for a double from here still, within weeks-, but that could provoke a huge sell off eventually and before the distribution of ARDOR on October 10-12.

Of course the upside of this could be several. For instance, that the foundation finds the money that they apparently need () to further finance the child chains and instead of ).5 per 1 NXT distributes those tokes on a 1:1 basis. That would be one that will definitely extend the period of value of NXT for a while. But make no mistake about it, this smart scheme is designed with the dual purpose of reinforcing the network (many more coin will remain in wallets and forging up until the early days of october, at least, probably and possibly much longer), and to , as a consequence, eliminating a lot of sell-side liquidity on the exchanges AND increase the buy-side, both of which have already being accomplished to a significant extent. The inevitable consequence, has been already felt in the increase in both volume and price. Did I say it was a very smart scheme? It is.