An awesome part of their system is the Custodian Proposals, where anyone can propose doing things to support the network and get funding in the form of Nubits. Examples include building an Android wallet for Peercoin, providing liquidity to markets and more. Basically you can propose anything, and if the shareholders like your proposal and trust you they can create Nubits to fund you.
Definitely beats begging for donations or building stuff for free.
This is nothing more than Delegates with inflation and variable pay voted on by the shareholders...
I agree that it resembles the delegate system, but it differs in how it can be very specifically targeted, and doesn't require the Custodian to run and maintain a VPS. The main advantage in my opinion is how it can free up a lot of funds for a given project immediately, as opposed to the steady income provided to delegates. You could also provide payment for delivery of development milestones for example.
On the other hand it's also open to abuse, imagine a Custodian being granted Nubits for a project, then just running off with the money. Might happen and from the discussions in the forums they seem to almost count on it happening, but since the damage is limited to the size of the custodian fund it's not considered very dangerous.