NEAR's on-chain governance body has voted to scrap the network's developer gas rebate, sending all gas fees to be burned instead of splitting them with smart-contract owners. The change is expected to take effect around August 2026 and makes NEAR's token issuance more deflationary.
NEAR's on-chain governance body, House of Stake, passed proposal HSP-027 to eliminate the network's developer gas rebate, a change that sends all network gas fees to be burned rather than partly rebated to smart-contract owners. NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin confirmed the vote Monday, framing it as a step to keep the protocol simpler.
Rebate cut ends the 30% payout to developers
Under the current design, 30% of gas fees generated by calls to a smart contract go to that contract's owner, with the remaining 70% burned. Once implemented, expected around August 2026 with the nearcore v2.14 release, the rebate drops to zero, so all gas fees are burned, according to a delegate who voted on the proposal. The same delegate put the final tally at 46 votes representing 4.66 million veNEAR in favor versus two votes representing 1,819 veNEAR against.
Developers were warned in advance
NEAR's developer-relations account had flagged the vote in early July, warning builders not to factor the gas bonus into their dApp budgets anymore. The network's governance account had described the measure as aimed at reducing protocol complexity and misaligned incentives for builders.
Why Polosukhin says the rebate no longer fits
Polosukhin, who designed the original rebate to incentivize developers to build reusable components, said the mechanism no longer reflects how most NEAR applications monetize, since projects typically sponsor gas costs on a smart contract and recoup revenue through spreads, subscriptions or ads instead. He also cited an accounting problem: the rebate was hard to distinguish from ordinary user deposits of funds.
A trial run for NEAR's economic governance
He also 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. According to Polosukhin: "excited to have explicit governance for economics of $NEAR". The change makes NEAR's tokenomics 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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