NEAR Protocol’s onchain governance body, the House of Stake, has voted to support lowering the network’s annual issuance ceiling from 2.5% to 1.6%, with the reduction phased in over 24 months, according to a Nov. 2 post by NEAR on X.
The vote does not change issuance on its own. NEAR said several steps still have to happen before the change can take effect. The House of Stake Security Council must review the result before ratification. An approximately 90-day grace period would follow, and the change would become binding only if validators adopt it through a protocol upgrade.
The proposal, HSP-029, states that it cannot take effect through a House of Stake vote alone. NEAR’s post did not include a vote count, and the version of the proposal page reviewed by Unchained showed no tally.
How HSP-029 would change the issuance schedule
HSP-029 was written by Sal Ternullo, CEO of Nasdaq-listed SVRN. If activated, the cap would fall by roughly 3.75 basis points per month, recalculated every epoch rather than adjusted in fixed steps, until it reaches 1.6% at month 24.
The split of newly issued tokens would stay the same: 90% would continue to go to stakers and 10% to the NEAR treasury.
Ternullo’s modeling projects 11.8 million fewer NEAR issued over two years and 66.1 million fewer over six years, leaving supply 4.36% below the current path.
At today’s staking participation, the proposal estimates gross staking yield would be about 3.37% at the target rate, down from roughly 5.27%.
The proposal also says 24 validator pools would stop covering their own costs at the new rate and at the token price it measured in September.
Using the total supply measured by the proposal on Sept. 22, the current 2.5% cap works out to about 89,500 new NEAR per day, while the 1.6% target implies about 57,300 per day. By Unchained’s calculation, that would mean roughly 32,200 fewer new NEAR issued each day once the transition is complete.
Disclosures and prior context
The proposal disclosed that SVRN holds about 55 million NEAR, with more than 90% of that amount staked, representing more than 8% of all staked NEAR. It also said SVRN intended to vote in favor.
Ternullo wrote that the lower issuance rate would also reduce the yield on SVRN’s own staked position.
According to the proposal, NEAR cut issuance to 2.5% in 2025 through the same validator upgrade path.
Ternullo presented HSP-029 as one of the alternatives raised after NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin withdrew a Sovereign Fund proposal in August, citing what Polosukhin described as risks the protocol should not internalize.
NEAR said quarterly reports will compare realized issuance with the published schedule once the phased reduction goes live.
