Yeah it definitely makes use of VMP, and not just on top of its own stuff. I have only looked at VMP2 VM, but the differences between that and what I saw in denuvo are not really thaaaat big. I would assume it's just the VMP3 VM which was supposedly improved but I havent looked at it at all.
So I think it shouldnt be the VM stuff that poses such a big problem to scene teams. I dont know what does though. (Not that I could crack it or anything, you know, but from a theoretical/spectator point of view.)