Selling your holdings to finance the project is not an ideal solution, but I'm afraid there isn't any. However, I think you have to acknowledge the fact, that you as developers are in a special position and selling your funds shouldn't happen the "regular" way. I think, a good solution would be, to 1.: Announce your intention to sell part of your funds at a certain time and tell how much you are planning to sell, 2.: probably not use a regular exchange, but rather sell them directly to people, maybe via an auction.
I fully agree with you. We are thinking about creating a solution like you proposed, but haven't finalized the
idea fully. All of the remaining team members are aware of the implications and we don't plan to create any
more unnecessary cause for concern.
Words are cheap and we know how brittle trust is in crypto, so we'd just like to invite you all to stay around
and see what we have been working on over the last weeks.