The novel bits are:

* Everything on the VM is purely functional, and inputs essentially cause transactions which can fail/succeed - the result being that it's supposedly easier to implement certain types of network protocols, specifically the ones that Ames implements

* A somewhat decent revision-controlled filesystem with push/pull/merge, static typing of files, and a built-in build system of sorts

And last but not least...

* Feudalism built into the core p2p protocol as an explicit design decision

Also, it's been under development for the better part of a decade.

So something like sandstorm with an autoscaler?

That's like saying a snowmobile is a horse on skis. This is more like a total re-implementation of computing based on a functional model and a re-implementation of networking based on a feudal/federated shared/distributed/content-addressable model.

Meh, it's a new VM and a dumb network topology. I don't know sandstorm so I'm not sure which of these you think is the horse in this analogy.