NEAR's on-chain governance body, House of Stake, passed proposal HSP-027 to scrap the protocol's developer gas rebate. Smart-contract owners currently keep 30% of the fees their contracts generate; once the change ships, every gas fee gets burned instead. Co-founder Illia Polosukhin, who designed the rebate, backed removing it.
NEAR's on-chain governance body, House of Stake, passed proposal HSP-027 to eliminate the protocol's developer gas rebate, a change that will send all network gas fees to be burned rather than partly rebated to smart-contract owners. NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin confirmed the outcome Monday.
A delegate who voted on the proposal put the final tally at 46 votes representing 4.66 million veNEAR in favor versus two votes representing 1,819 veNEAR against.
Contract owners lose their 30% cut
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, the rebate drops to 0% and all gas fees are burned, expected around August 2026 with the nearcore v2.14 release.
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."
Polosukhin says the incentive stopped matching how apps earn
Polosukhin designed the original rebate to incentivize developers to build reusable components. Yet 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 instead.
He also cited an accounting problem: the rebate was hard to distinguish from ordinary user deposits of funds. NEAR's governance account had described the measure as aimed at reducing protocol complexity and misaligned incentives for builders.
A test of House of Stake's authority over economics
Polosukhin framed the vote as a test of House of Stake's authority over NEAR's core economic parameters ahead of future proposals, saying he was excited to have explicit governance for the economics of NEAR.
Because the carve-out from fee burning disappears, the change makes NEAR's token issuance more deflationary, though it does not alter the network's broader value-capture model.
Source: The Defiant
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