What happens if some of the 10k chips don't work? Or if the final PCB received doens't work? Since each chip is allocated to a person this might be a problem right?
Avalon has promised that they will send working and tested chips ONLY. As for the PCB, it will be a working and tested design prior of soldering the Avalon chips.
As I said in one of the previous posts, there is good chance something goes wrong until the time we have working asic miner, so everybody has to do his/her risk assessment on his/her own. As far as I'm concerned, those 2 positions you mention, hold the least risk among others.