We will discuss the escrow for the contest funds within the team. In general, I do not see a problem to set up a multi-sig escrow for the contest funds if it this will help to increase trust in our team.
Our plan is to roll out new pairs based on the community support and their activity. Each pair means additional infrastructure costs which are not low in case you want to offer smooth trading experience. We have secured funding from two local angel investors but we do not want to burn money just for infrastructure.
We are just testing newly added trading pairs which will be open during the Alpha.

If Coinbase is adding 100k users daily we have a lot of work to do on the marketing side of the project and community engagement.
However, we are sure that thanks to our different approach we will attract many traders who will want to try something different and better from the industry standard which we have at the moment.
Alpha is coming soon:)
Indeed, an exchange could add thousands of customers within a day or a week, and NakamotoX may become the next great exchange in the market.
The alpha contest seems interesting, it is not started yet?
Multi escrows is a good movement to gain trust from people, and to increase your site popularity, I recommend to advertise it through signature campaign during this alpha test, even for a month or two advertising. You may consider it.