Yes, you right the final launch of the product depends on the development of the SMT itself. Its good to know that @ned is on the advisory board and therefore I think the project will be up-to-date with the latest development of the SMT project.
The power metrics should be very similar to Steem and Steempower up system but without a SBD equivalent from what I know. The distribution of all tokens should also be more "fair" since the APPICS Team wants to avoid that whales are dominating the trending topic content.