I don't know if you're a shill, a troll, an idiot or just uninformed. For the sake of argument, DENIC could do it. It's the non-profit cooperative behind .de, one of the largest CC-TLDs, with more domains than .org. DENIC has applied to be the .org registry and lost out to PIR who are selling the TLD to line their coffers. The domains under .de cost a fraction of the domains under .com and .org, because DENIC is a) non-profit and b) a cooperative of domain registrars and internet providers, who share the common interest of having a reliable and cost-effective registry. A .de domain can be had for less than $0.20/month at the consumer level. It is no surprise to me that the people trying to stop the handover of .org to Ethos Capital chose non-profit cooperative as the business model for their alternative registry. It works.

But I guess your answer will be that they can't do it because they haven't paid the kickbacks and are thus not worthy. Anyway, DENIC has learned their lesson from the .org charade and would not try to work on something similar with the corrupt ICANN again, but they could and would do a better job than Verisign.

If the writing wasn't on the wall before, it is now.

I know that the role of registry operator for a TLD is exclusive. My point is that if Verisign doesn't want the job at the current price, then it can fuck off and let someone else do it, because there is no shortage of applicants for that position. ICANN allowing Verisign to raise prices even though that isn't at all necessary to fill the role of registry operator is proof positive that ICANN is corrupt. Hence the last sentence in my previous comment. I'd be very surprised if ICANN or the centralized DNS root survived the 2020s.

Is there a shortage of applicants for operating the .com registry at the present price? ICANN is committing suicide with these plans.