That’s actually addressing a different kind of Home Automation standard: it’s a network messaging protocol. Similar to zwave and Zigbee, but for IP devices.
When a Z wave device or a Zigbee device joins a network, it can “advertise“ its capabilities. So it tells the hub “I am a dimmer, I can accept multi level set commands.“ Or “I am an on/off switch.“ Or “I am a battery operated sensor.“ this is what allows easy interoperability for devices from different brands.
Up until now, there has been no similar home automation protocol for Wi-Fi or other IP devices. Every manufacturer of Wi-Fi switches made up their own message format. So for one you might have to send “01“ to turn it on. For a switch from a different brand you might have to send “alpha zero.“ You could have another brand where you had to send “banana” (that one isn’t a real example, but the point is every on/off switch had its own message format.) Among other things, that made it very difficult for the various voice assistants who had to have a unique integration for every different brand of Wi-Fi device.
So they finally got a bunch of big companies together, including all the voice assistant companies, and said let’s do what Zigbee does and have a standard protocol so each device can tell the voice assistants what it is and what commands it can accept. Thus making both onboarding and interoperability much simpler.
That standard specifically is NOT Going to standardize either a rules engine or the UI. As a smartthings parallel you can think of it as A set of generic DTHs for IP devices.
As Such, it doesn’t necessarily make Ifttt irrelevant. It might just make it easier to add new brands to Ifttt. At some point you still need an if/then rules engine, and Ifttt could still be that if it chooses to.
There’s an existing community discussion thread on Project CHIP:
Matter - smart home connectivity standard (formerly Project CHIP)