NEAR Community Approves Token Emission Reduction to 1.6%

The NEAR Protocol community has approved proposal HSP-029 to gradually reduce the maximum annual issuance of NEAR from 2.5% to 1.6%. Voting in the House of Stake concluded on November 2, 2026: the initiative was supported by 99.97% of veNEAR with a turnout of about 62%, with 32 participants voting with approximately 3.29 million veNEAR.

How the issuance will decrease

The reduction will span 24 months: the rate will decrease by approximately 0.0375 percentage points monthly with adjustments in each network epoch. The current model of distributing new tokens will remain unchanged: 90% of the issuance will go to staking participants, and 10% will go to the protocol's treasury.

The authors aim to reduce the dilution of shares for NEAR holders not participating in staking and slow down the growth of supply. Document forecasts: daily issuance will decrease from 89,517 to 57,291 NEAR after reaching the goal; over two years, issuance will be 11.8 million NEAR less than under the current model; over six years, the difference will be 66.1 million NEAR, or about 4.36% of the total supply; gross staking yield will drop from 5.27% to 3.37% with the same share of locked tokens. Upon reaching the goal, 24 out of 405 pools may no longer cover operational expenses through rewards.

What's next

The decision does not immediately change network parameters. The proposal will undergo a review by the House of Stake Security Council, followed by a protocol update and acceptance by validators. A transition period of about 90 days is provided for the adaptation of wallets, exchanges, custodial services, and staking platforms, after which the phased reduction will begin.

The initiative's author is SVRN CEO Sal Ternullo. He previously proposed completely abandoning the issuance of new NEAR and moving to a fixed supply, but this option was not included in the plan. SVRN owns more than 55 million NEAR, primarily in staking; according to Ternullo, the reduction in issuance will decrease the company's annual income by approximately 970,000 tokens.

Following the approval, NEAR continued to decline: on November 3, the asset traded below $4 after falling by about 10% in the previous session.