Greetings Nick,

You have hit on the core issue.  I have been banging the drum on this for some time now, including an appearance at a Board public forum a few ICANN meetings ago (I cannot remember which) where I stated directly that they should put ALL the auction proceeds into the reserve fund.  As I recall, the grand compromise was to take “some” from the auction proceeds, and fund the rest over “X” years from the ICANN budget.

For the record, my view is straightforward:  ICANN should keep it all as a reserve, particularly in this crazy economic time resulting from COVID-19.

Thank you for raising this concern on the Council list.  It’s serious business…

Best Regards,

/Stephen

From: Nick Wenban-Smith <Nick.Wenban-Smith@nominet.uk>
Date: Friday, April 17, 2020 at 10:27
To: Katrina Sataki <katrina@nic.lv>, "Stephen Deerhake @ ASNIC" <sdeerhake@nic.as>, ccnso-council <ccnso-council@icann.org>
Subject: RE: [ccnso-council] CCWG Auctionn Proceeds --Followup to my remarks on today's call

Yes thanks Stephen – another obvious issue for me is whether Covid changes any or all of this? I mean if ICANN ever needed a proper contingency $$$ sum held in reserve then now would be the time to have it, and to instead press on with distribution based on assumptions from back in 2014 or whenever just seems nuts.

[snip]