New block explorer for Ardor:
https://ardorportal.org/So Ignis is a child chain of ardor, is ardor independent from nxt?
Yes. NXT is independent, IGNIS is a child chain of ARDOR. Since January 1 there is no "tie" between both chains (NXT and ARDOR) anymore; only the fact that the same development team provides updates for both chains.
Also i dont understand where the nxt developers are going with nxt? The recent dump kind of tells me that people will only buy it when they expect to get an airdrop from whatever next child chain is getting dropped.
I see it the other way around: People bought Nxt massively because of the airdrop, but that was an exceptional situation. Now the price of NXT and the 0,5 IGNIS combined is about 1 USD, only a little bit less than the price of NXT just before the snapshot ($2 was an over-hyped price, in my opinion). But it is clear for me that NXT will be less important in the future, now that ARDOR has started.
All depends if "old" NXT is used as an "easy-to-use" ICO platform like it's Jelurida's goal. If not, then the price can go down much further.