In March 2019, ICANN proposed removing price caps on the dot org domain name registrations. ICANN received overwhelming responses against the proposed change yet in May 2019 it decided to go ahead with the change.

1. The CEO of ICANN left ICANN and began working at investment company Abry. Abry is a company that is co-founded by one of the members of ETHOS (who is purchasing the dot org registry).
2. Abry purchases a domain company called Donuts.
3. The co-founder of Donuts winds up on the board of PIR, which has control of Dot Org.
4. PIR sells Dot Org to Ethos.
5. Ethos Capital is co-founded by two people in May 2019. One is a former SR VP of ICANN and the other is a partner at Abry.

It seems that at every step of the way there is an influential former executive from ICANN who is involved in the transaction to purchase control of the dot org domain registry.

At this point it’s unclear whether the sale will be approved by ICANN. ICANN is requesting more information about the sale and the ability of the involved parties to manage the dot org domain name registry.

Read the official ICANN announcement https://www.icann.org/news/blog/org-update