Those projects are funded from auctions around 2012 and fund management since, which is a fund separate from ICANN's own accounting. Some people really, really

Those projects are funded from auctions around 2012 and fund management since, which is a fund separate from ICANN's own accounting. Some people really, really wanted .blog or whatever, and the proceeds of the resulting auctions went into a fund that was to be spent on… I'm not well informed, but the money for at least one of those projects came from that fund. The others may too. https://domainincite.com/20440-wordpress-reveals-it-bought-blog-for-19-million https://domainincite.com/20440-wordpress-reveals-it-bought-b... Domain Incite also has other articles covering this subject area, some with profanity, all well-informed. These price hikes have a simple reason: ICANN's per-year per-domain fee was not adjusted by inflation and most of the expenses do grow with inflation. No matter how well or badly ICANN spends its money, at some point a flat price was going to run into inflation-bound expenses and lose. Feel free to criticise the Māori project, or ICANN's arguably wasteful meetings, or whatever you want, but please don't confuse the money in that fund with the budget for ICANN's operations.