This is an open source version of another game called Cube World, which was basically a scam when it came out. Had only a few of the promised features and didn’t update for years.
The project started, as you stated, as a clone of Cube World (the name CloneWorld was thrown a few times, did not stick). But it was rapidly decided that the direction we wanted was different. Veloren is a look-similar (and I would argue that not that much) of Cube Wolrd, but it is headed in a completely independent direction.
Default gameplay maybe? But I'm pretty sure there were servers that tried to do whatever Veloren is doing. The diversity of minigames and whole game concepts on Minecraft servers was pretty extreme for a while.
But Cube World wasn't a crafting or mining game; rather, it was an open-world Zelda-like ARPG, with a lot of progression from randomly-generated gear. The voxel size is smaller, and voxels are untextured, resulting in a 3D-ified pixel sprite look.