In my opinion, once a product, altcoin in this case, has been developed there is no logic in using escrow. The developer should receive all the raise upon development. Escrow may be needed throughout a development stage to essentially incentivise the developer to complete the project before it gets all the ICO-raised funds.

We at incremint, are not planning to monitor operational and capex activity of an ICO issuer but yes, we will be protecting investors from projects that raise cash on mere promises and then failing to deliver on actual product. Investors may vote in favour of payback. Obviously, the mechanism we are building is meant to be balanced. Serious ICO sponsor will propose milestones it plans to abide by. Moreover, deadlines could be postponed by vote too. But no delivery means payback to backers intimately.

Unlikely that any ICO used as escrow mechanism we are offering: escrow both in crypto and fiat (if selected by ICO issuers to avoid FX exposure). Besides, the release mechanism we are building doesn't really make us a middleman. Backers will be voting on ICO issuer's milestone performance.

Escrow could have been done on a multisig wallet basis but that's not really an escrow from many perspectives, including personal safety of a signatory - someone holding a key to, say, a $10m escrow wallet may prefer to keep his identity hidden from the community. That creates a different risk - colluding and running away with money.

Hey guys! I am part of the incremint.io team working on the smart contract based escrow solution. May not be - frankly - be as savvy as most of you in blockchain etc. But with my professional background, having worked as a lawyer on $hundred million / billion dollar M&As, I can tell you that escrow may be quite a useful tool to make sure buyer doesn't get screwed up. And more so in the ICO ecosystem. With so many scams, escrow could be the answer. Imagine in a Tezos situation $200mln out of $232 were escrowed. Backers would have received 85 cents on the buck back.