The board approved a plan to create a separate group within ICANN to manage a grant program to dole out the funds. Money received funds from auctions held at the first stage of the program for new generic top-level domains: if several applicants applied for a domain and they could not agree among themselves, the fate of the domain was decided at an auction, the funds from which went to the corporation's budget.
The .WEB auction brought the largest amount to ICANN - $135 million. This is followed by auctions that determined the fate of the .SHOP and .APP domain zones - 41.5 million and 25 million, respectively. In total, 212 million dollars have been accumulated in the reserve fund. The ICANN Board has decided to create a working group to handle the distribution of this money.
The money will be allocated in the form of grants, and their recipients will be companies and organizations working on projects to develop and improve the structure of unique identifiers of the global network, increase interoperability and further expand the Internet infrastructure in countries whose population is not yet provided with access to the Internet in enough.
Domain Name Wire, reporting this news, draws attention to the fact that theoretically ICANN's reserve fund could be reduced by more than half. Afilias (already changed its name to Altanovo) continues to insist that the auction for the .WEB domain was held in violation of ICANN rules, and seeks to cancel its results.
