There a whole lot of other places with weird code like this. Yes, it is obfuscated, contrary to the claims that it is 'open source'.
Not to worry, the NEX community will get its Free and Fair version:
https://github.com/FrictionlessCoin/NEXSerious question to Frictionless:
What is your experience with Java? In some cases you appear to be relatively knowledgable. In others, such as pointing at imperfectly-decompiled Java code and stating "obfuscated", less so.