Hi again and sorry for the delayed reply.
I realize it is not an easy thing to solve.
I also both feel and understand that something needs to be done due to the situation at hand.
The problem is that many of the solutions i would think of may include administration overhead, but i guess i will put forward two maybe three ideas.
The first and easiest but that will not satisfy everyone is the most obvious one.
Only allow new members to procure from the waiting list and make the addresses nontransferable.
This would in my opinion be a stop gap for a bigger solution because we cannot go ahead and block legitimate business needs for larger entities just because of newcomers like myself.
However that ties into my second more realistic approach of what might be accepted but also requires some changes on the administration.
How about simply having a split queue system?
New members with single LIR goes to the front of the line and gets an nontransferable address.
Others will according to their number of existing LIRs or ranges go to the back of the line according to their current ownership where an legitimate need for more ranges constitutes an expected revenue across said ranges and as such the bigger expectancy of acquiring larger ranges via an market otherwise said ranges are not being utilized properly (i understand the existence of non profits and edge cases but not everyone can be 100% satisfied, neither can i with this in the future)
Make an buffer that is not possible to be allocated to multi LIRs/multi range holders.
I am not an old member enough to have good insight to where a good buffer would be but for arguments sake i would say 100.
This means that there is supposed to be 100 /24 ranges available (Could be 20 or 30 or anything RIPE agrees on) and as long as there is, the "Multi holder Queue" would be able to request ranges against motivational uses.
There could even be a third queue at say 250 ranges available where all the ranges above that goes to open market against the requirement that they become used within x time and if they are to be resold they have to be resold/rented out at fair pricing. This could be 25,50 or whatever, i don't have the insight yet on how often ranges are allocated to give an accurate number and will not pretend as such either.
This would guarantee that the original spirit of the /24's for newcomers idea is retained, while adopting to the wishes of the larger members as well to a degree, I fully understand that there are some really really big entities out there with big needs for IPv4 still and i don't want to block them in any way shape or form because i one day hope to be able to make use of our ranges and services to become on of the really big players, with the benefit of being such a new player that i can already today build IPv6 native and just use IPv4 for the still required things and then hopefully phase out IPv4 and return our ranges down the road.
We today have as i mentioned earlier an single IPv4 /24 available for our older WISP/MSP datacenter, It was acquired from an entity called Resilans (If mentioning other entities by name is not allowed i apologize) they also helped us with the process of becoming an LIR and ripe member so we are VERY grateful to them as even tho they did charge for their time, it was a fair price and we would not be here today without them.
Entities like them are in my opinion fair and could benefit from the third queue where they did price fairly against us and didnt try to gouge us like other entities that have contacted us after we became members (some asked for outrageous prices for a single /24)
They also provide the ability for non members that cannot become members for some reason to acquire IPs for their business, such as it was for us back then. We didn't have any multi-homing ability which we now will with Datacenter 2 (Which is our fiber ISP location) and our L2 link between them. So we didn't even qualify until recently and we also didn't feel we could justify for our then VERY small operations being an LIR and the administration around that, there are others like us out there and for them an resell/second hand renting market of IPv4 is very beneficial
We all know IPv4 is a sinking ship and we implement stop gaps such as NAT and then CGNAT to try and prolong its inevitable doom, but until that day comes i hope that my understanding of RIPE so far is accurate where you.. Us all try to make the playing field as equal as possible without hindering each others opportunities.
Sorry for the mile long message but this is in my opinion one of several potential ways to do this down the road that might help in some way.
I would also like to put out there the idea of presenting the number of ranges in store on the LIR waiting list graph, it would serve two purposes.
It would allow small entities like us that when there is a 0 waiting line to have an understanding of how soon there might be a queue again so we can plan our potential entry as an LIR. I actually held off on us being an LIR because we had so much else to prepare and get in place for our new venture, if i would have seen the graph rapidly declining i would have tried to become one sooner and perhaps been able to grab one prior to the member days rather than come in 5 days after the waiting list shot up.
The second benefit would also be to drive home the acute situation to everyone and perhaps open up for more understanding for the smaller entities out there that have to rely on this service to get IPv4 other than turning to in some cases heavily overpriced addresses.
One last thing before i end this already too long rant.
Thank you all so far for not only actually listening to a newcomers rant about our opinion, but also truly showing to us that you really care about our opinion and input. We cant wait to be able to bring back and contribute to this community and hopefully prove our self worthy of the time and consideration shown so far.
Very warm regards, Mathias W
CEO and Infrastructure Architect - West digital Management AB.