There could have been a legitimate discussion on whether the amateur radio community really needed some 16M IP addresses and if a partial sale of the resource could have benefited the community more, but any such discussion was denied when the ARDC decided to do backroom deals with IPs they might not legally have had ownership over.
Still, $108 million is a lot more than the 'couple of million' to $50m rumours that were floating about at the time of sale, hopefully they can do some good with the money and buy back some goodwill. Let's just hope the wholesale of prices of IPv4 addresses doesn't rise too much leading to another /10 sale, or if it does that they sell off their own blocks instead of the blocks allocated to the rest of the world.
Yep, HAMNET[1] had to renumber parts of their network, which isn't a lot of fun when your routers are on antenna towers.
ARDC is funding only US entities at this time: https://www.ampr.org/giving/
[1]: https://hamnetdb.net
Does that ever really happen? If they are competent enough to know they need a better staff that's one thing, but if they are already incompetent they will just blow through the endowment with nothing to show for it.
Overall I think the sale was the right thing to do, but it is the fruit of a poisoned tree to some extent, and there will be ongoing questions about whether or not ARDC should really be in control of these funds. I am personally most just concerned about ARDC's ability to competently manage such a large endowment, since historically they've been a fairly low-activity group with some odd internal dynamics and a bit of a rift with some other amateur radio groups. On the other hand, maybe the endowment will allow them to hire a competent staff and become much more involved in promoting digital amateur radio.