Everyone should read this.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=407388.0
Does anyone know who is the author of the article ? He should be nominated for a reward in article category.

So here is the trillion dollar question: How do you arrive at a series of unpredictable but consensus verifiable number without proof of work? This is NXT's key innovation.

What we are talking about here is the possibility of a decentralized crypto with instant transactions. No more waiting around for confirmations, as with Bitcoin. This is the first Holy Grail of NXT.

Furthermore, you could, in theory, rather than broadcasting your transactions to the whole network, send them directly to the next block author.
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This could potentially allow NXT to match or even surpass Visa’s transaction load. This is the second Holy Grail.

Fortunately, there is one good reason to expect that it will change. That reason is that, even for the dragons themselves who sit atop vast hordes, it is not in their own interest to horde their own coins. With a little luck these individuals will realize that if they continue to horde their coins, then someone else will simply copy the code/idea and release “Even-NXT-er” with fairer distribution, and they will be left out in the cold, lords of the world’s metaphorically largest pile of valueless abstraction. To any dragons who may be reading this, I want ask you rhetorical question that I hope will take very seriously. Is it better to be 1/20th owner of all the shit in the world, or 1/100th owner of all the gold?