A major rebranding might help NXT get back on track.

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.

Yes, that's the best way to do it. Price is still very low. But looks like it's coming up hard:

https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/price-speculation/msg217772/#msg217772

More good news

So am i correct in understanding that my balance will be split into a 50/50 amount of FXT and FNX?

Yes but it's additional to your NXT, which you keep because the NXT 1.x chain will go on.

No, you'll get the same amount of FXT as your NXT (1:1) and 50% as FNX (1:2). The other half of FNX will be held by the devs to fund further development.

Nope,

you will receive the forging token (FXT) based on your amount of NXT at 1:1 ratio + 50% of that in the child chain token (FNX).

Russia’s National Settlement Depository Successfully Tests Blockchain-Based E-Voting System

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/russia-s-national-settlement-depository-successfully-tests-blockchain-based-e-voting-system-1464198071


"Rymanov explained that the NSD’s e-proxy voting proof-of-concept (PoC) project specifications required setting up a private permissioned blockchain where every node participating in the network is known, and included a number of specific challenges related to processing capacity and permission-based access to the data. According to Rymanov, other blockchain technologies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum couldn’t meet the project’s requirements with an out-of-the-box solution, which motivated the choice of the NXT platform."

“Using the proof-of-work (PoW) Bitcoin blockchain would have potentially created a situation where a particular node with a superior computing power could gain an unfair advantage over its peers, thus jeopardizing the security of the network and, if being a malicious actor, could rig the results of the vote,” said Rymanov. “Furthermore, we see PoW systems as an unnecessary drain on resources in private permissioned blockchains.”

“With regards to Ethereum, our team has been in touch with the Ethereum core developers and has been informed that the current limit on processing is around 60 transactions per second,” added Rymanov. “However, even though Ethereum offered a huge improvement both in functionality and processing speed over Bitcoin blockchain, it did not match the NSD requirements.”

“After a careful consideration we have selected NXT,” Rymanov said. “The proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain has provided us with enough flexibility to architect a solution that is scalable, stable and with processing capabilities well in the range of NSD expectations. In the lab environment we have pushed DSX fork of NXT to process up to 800 transactions per second. With the custom developed e-proxy voting module running on top of the NXT fork we have stabilized the system at 80 votes per second, which is 160 transactions per second reaching a notable result in line with NSD expectations.”

https://twitter.com/NxtCommunity/status/735538901859860481