Sam123 is correct.
Aeternity will eventually be it's own blockchain.
Aeons will temporarily be on the ethereum blockchain during Aeternity's development.

I think I understand what they mean by escrow. They want it to be like a dominant assurance contract.
We could do more than escrow. If we fail, we could give their money back plus interest.

If the tokensale is priced in bitcoins or eth then the exchange risk for a one year period is big.

I feel like all this money is a distraction, and we will have an easier time writing the code if we can't spend the money till we are done.