NEAR's on-chain governance body, House of Stake, approved proposal HSP-027, ending the 30% gas rebate paid to smart-contract owners. Once the change ships, all network gas fees will be burned. Co-founder Illia Polosukhin framed the vote as a test of the body's authority over NEAR's core economic parameters.
House of Stake passed proposal HSP-027 to eliminate NEAR's developer gas rebate, a change that will send all network gas fees to be burned rather than partly rebated to smart-contract owners. Polosukhin confirmed the outcome Monday, calling it a step toward keeping the protocol simpler and cleaner going forward.
Under the current design, a smart contract's owner takes 30% of the gas fees generated by calls to it, with the remaining 70% burned. The rebate drops to 0% once implemented, expected around August 2026 with the nearcore v2.14 release, according to a delegate who voted on the proposal.
The vote cleared with 4.66 million veNEAR behind it
That same delegate account put the final tally at 46 votes representing 4.66 million veNEAR in favor versus two votes representing 1,819 veNEAR against.
Builders had warning. NEAR's developer-relations account flagged the vote in early July, telling them: "don't factor this gas bonus into your dApp's budget anymore." The protocol's governance account described the measure as aimed at reducing protocol complexity and misaligned incentives for builders.
Polosukhin says the rebate no longer matches how dApps earn
Polosukhin designed the original rebate to incentivize developers to build reusable components. But he said the mechanism no longer reflects how most NEAR applications monetize, since projects typically sponsor gas costs and recoup revenue through spreads, subscriptions or ads.
He also cited an accounting problem: the rebate was hard to distinguish from ordinary user deposits of funds.
Beyond the fee mechanics, Polosukhin framed the vote as a trial run for House of Stake's authority over NEAR's core economic parameters, calling it a test ahead of future proposals and saying he was excited to have explicit governance for the economics of NEAR. The change makes NEAR's token issuance more deflationary by removing a carve-out from fee burning, though it does not alter the network's broader value-capture model.
Source: The Defiant
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