NEAR's on-chain governance body, House of Stake, passed proposal HSP-027 to eliminate the protocol's developer gas rebate. All network gas fees will be burned rather than partly rebated to smart-contract owners, a change expected around August 2026 with the nearcore v2.14 release.
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.
The rebate drops from 30% to zero
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 0%, so all gas fees are burned, according to a delegate who voted on the proposal.
That same account put the final tally at 46 votes representing 4.66 million veNEAR in favor versus two votes representing 1,819 veNEAR against. NEAR's developer-relations account had flagged the vote in early July, warning builders: "don't factor this gas bonus into your dApp's budget anymore."
Why the mechanism's designer backed removing it
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 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 NEAR's economics
Polosukhin framed the vote as a trial run for House of Stake's authority over NEAR's core economic parameters, calling it a great 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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