Why not sell miners for example via Ebay? Ebay has a time-tested escrow structure. No problems with trust and charges of fraud. Or the developers have no money for the release of the first batch?
The market place like ebay would charge 10% for listing, the cost will be added the price.. we are trying to keep the price low as possible so ppl can afford it.
also, we completely bootstrapped this project using our own money, with no extra fund. those fpga chips are expensive, we can't afford building the a batch of hundreds of units without some pre-order money...