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They need to store things in the blockchain, namely meta-data. I think there are also a few other changes that they made to the blockchain structure that would have made it very hard to simply use Bitcoin.

I imagine that they'll at least merge-mine with Bitcoin.

This exactly. We also wanted to separate the payment protocol from the data protocol.

If sidechains or treechains become viable we plan to merge it back in to Bitcoin proper.

They don't want to host storage space. They want to bootstrap a cryptocurrency backed by storage space and availability as value. Eventually it would lead to a decentralized storage, and you would pay with the cryptocurrency for it.

A nested bubble is a better bubble.