People could contribute "anonymously" without to go through banks and payment processors. Now eth fees are not that low and transfers not as fast as we want but if we can cut the middle man(banks) I think it's worth it(for some people).
It is perhaps due to the high gas fees with the ETH price volatility and showing the total amount funded publicly which costed them since they were unable to afford the additional auction costs.
Perhaps better alternative blockchains that are designed to scale with very low transaction fees and support smart contracts with EVM compatibility, would have been better for this use case.
Clearly Ethereum has let down the web3 crowd once again on this occasion. What a shame.
Beside maybe a legal obligation that people would have to take them to court over to sort out, no better than a gofundme/kickstarter.