The technology have no special, i think its mostly copied from Nem but there are some small change that may make Xtrabyte replace Nem. We still need to wait more on those change to decide invest to this coins or not.
Of course it is no substitute. Don't even want to compare the sect is nem, there's a bunch of fanatics who every day waiting for a catapult. But XBY well by the end of December it was possible to raise a lot of x's with this project. Possibly even continues to grow up a bit. but I have little faith that this project will be a multi-billion dollar.
Good luck to the developers and the community. a lot of x's