NEAR governance votes to cut issuance, trimming staker yield to 3.37%

On Monday, the NEAR House of Stake voted to approve proposal HSP-029. This proposal lowers the network’s annual token issuance limit from 2.5% to 1.6%.

As a result of the cut, the proposal’s own modeling shows that the gross staking yield will drop from about 5.27% to about 3.37%.

Validator commission revenue would drop about 36%

90% of newly minted NEAR goes to stakers and 10% to the treasury. HSP-029, authored by SVRN chief executive Sal Ternullo, keeps the split and changes one parameter.

The yields assume a staking ratio of 42.71% of supply, a measure of the share in a Sept. 22 snapshot.

NEAR climbed 86% in the two weeks leading up to the snapshot to $4.30, while the staking ratio dropped from 46.92%.

The gross yield increased from 4.796% to 5.268% in the same fortnight. Ternullo construes this as a stake following the price and the cost of locking up liquidity more than the emission rate.

If staking and fees remained unchanged, validator commission revenue would decrease by about 36%. The model estimates that 24 of 405 pools would not be able to recoup machine costs from commission and owner stake with NEAR price at $4.30.

Based on Ternullo’s math, a person who stakes 1,000 NEAR will end the second year with about 20 fewer tokens than they would have under the old cap. Holders who don’t stake, who make up 57.3% of the supply, lose less and give up nothing in return.

The public voting records for House of Stake show that 3.29 million veNEAR voted “yes,” while 1,071 veNEAR abstained.

Security Council can veto HSP-029 until Nov. 16

As per the plan, HSP-029 can still be vetoed by the House of Stake Security Council until Nov. 16. Also, validators need to change to a protocol that the House of Stake can’t force them to adopt.

The first cut happens after about 90 days of grace. From then on, issuance drops by about 3.75 basis points every month until it hits 1.6% after 24 months.

Up until then, the limit will be 2.5%. Daily issuance goes down from about 89,500 NEAR per day to about 57,300 NEAR per day at the target rate.

The model sees 11.8 million fewer tokens over two years and 66.1 million over six. That means supply is 4.36% smaller than it would have been under the old cap.

NEAR already cut its cap from 5% to 2.5% in late October 2025.

Cryptopolitan reported in August that co-founder Illia Polosukhin wanted to establish a fund of about 30 million NEAR, worth about $53 million at the time, and use the yield it generated to pay for network security. He dropped the idea Aug. 20, and Ternullo says his proposal is a result of that decision.

Ternullo also mentions Solana, where a similar cut called SGP-0002 passed on August 28 with 67.001% of the stake. In August, Galaxy’s VP of research, Lucas Tcheyan, told clients that SOL or ETH won’t move on supply cuts alone, because it is demand that dictates where they trade.

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