I'm all for keeping things simple. A lot of the smart contract stuff I see seems very complex. If you can have this escrow account controlling only if funds get released or returned then it should work. I have thought that some sort of crowdfunding could be a good fit for Hive. In any such system there has to be trust, but that is something people have to earn. I don't think you can do it all with algorithms.
Have fun at HiveFest. I won't be there this time, but I will get to one when I can.