ICANN does not dictate pricing on nTLDs. ICANN gets an (very large) initial fee to approve the nTLD and gets a small cut of every domain sold, while the registry is free to set their own pricing and terms.

>if you don't use it for X amount of time, then it's lost

Okay, now come up with a definition of "use" that effectively eliminates squatting-for-profit that doesn't also eliminate legitimate uses for having multiple domains that don't look like they're "being used"

> Yes I understand that it's likely that squatters would've taken this instead.

The squatters are actually better in some cases. If they're selling a non-premium domain that you can renew cheaply, the up front price can be more tolerable than the long term cost of a premium domain.

It looks like the premium domains for .zip are about $550 USD on Porkbun. I'd way rather pay $5k up front for a .com compared to $5.5k over 10 years for a .zip.