NEAR has initiated voting to reduce the issuance rate to 1.6% over 24 months

The NEAR ecosystem governance proposal HSP-029 has entered the voting stage, proposing to gradually reduce the maximum annual issuance rate of NEAR tokens from 2.5% to 1.6%. This proposal was put forward by SVRN CEO Sal Ternullo, planning to linearly decrease by approximately 3.75 basis points per epoch over 24 months, while maintaining a 90/10 allocation ratio between stakers and the treasury. After the vote passes, there will be a 90-day grace period before the reduction officially begins.

The proposal's calculations indicate that this plan is expected to reduce the issuance of approximately 11.8 million NEAR tokens over two years, with a cumulative reduction of about 66.1 million tokens over six years, equivalent to a 4.36% decrease in supply compared to the current situation. The annualized staking yield will gradually decrease from the current 5.268% to 3.372%. The author points out that this move aims to reduce the degree of dilution for non-staking holders and responds to discussions regarding the protocol's discretion risk following the withdrawal of the previous Sovereign Fund proposal.

This proposal must go through a dual process to take effect: after passing the House of Stake vote, validators must also independently adopt it through the standard protocol upgrade process. The proposal cites Solana's SGP-0002, which was passed in August 2026 with a staking weight approval of 67.001% for a similar issuance reduction, as a precedent. Currently, the NEAR network has a total of 406 active validators, with a staking rate of 42.71%.