Dawn is reconsituted. Today's dawn only has one team member in common with those who made that bitcointalk ad: me.
it's not possible to invest in dawn, because it is an experimental software project and as such, @l0k1 and I would be utterly insane to promise returns. Thus, we are accepting donations to move the work forward, and make no promises, especially promises of a financial return to anyone, ever.
Maybe our only promise is to release code we think suits the context it will be used in better than the alternatives.
Thanks for explaining in more detail, the broken trail I was following was a bit confusing.