The NEAR House of Stake voted on Monday to approve proposal HSP-029, lowering the network's annual token issuance limit from 2.5% to 1.6%. Issuance is the rate at which new tokens are minted into existence, and because emissions are the source of staking rewards, the cap acts as a direct lever on what stakers earn for helping secure the network. According to the proposal's own modeling, the cut will reduce gross staking yield from roughly 5.27% to roughly 3.37%.

Validator commission revenue projected to fall about 36%

Under NEAR's current issuance design, 90% of newly minted tokens go to stakers and 10% to the treasury. HSP-029, authored by SVRN chief executive Sal Ternullo and detailed on the NEAR governance forum, preserves that split and changes only one parameter.

The yield projections assume a staking ratio of 42.71% of supply, based on a Sept. 22 snapshot. In the two weeks leading up to that snapshot, NEAR climbed 86% to $4.30 while the staking ratio fell from 46.92%. Over the same fortnight, gross yield rose from 4.796% to 5.268%. Ternullo reads this as staking activity tracking the token price and the cost of locking up liquidity more closely than the emission rate.

If staking levels and fees were to remain unchanged, validator commission revenue would decline by about 36%. The model estimates that 24 of 405 pools would be unable to recoup machine costs from commission and owner stake at a NEAR price of $4.30.

Based on Ternullo's calculations, a person staking 1,000 NEAR would end the second year with roughly 20 fewer tokens than under the old cap. Non-staking holders, who account for 57.3% of supply, lose less and forgo nothing in return — they receive no issuance today, so a smaller emissions budget narrows the yield advantage stakers hold over passive holders.

The public voting records for the House of Stake show 3.29 million veNEAR voted "yes," while 1,071 veNEAR abstained. The proposal is listed on the House of Stake portal.

Security Council can veto HSP-029 until Nov. 16

Under the plan, HSP-029 remains subject to veto by the House of Stake Security Council until Nov. 16. Adoption also depends on validators upgrading to a protocol the House of Stake cannot force them to adopt — a dependency that makes validator coordination the practical gatekeeper for the ramp.

The first cut takes effect after a grace period of about 90 days. Thereafter, issuance falls by roughly 3.75 basis points each month until reaching 1.6% after 24 months; until then, the limit stands at 2.5%. Daily issuance drops from about 89,500 NEAR per day to about 57,300 NEAR per day at the target rate.

The model projects 11.8 million fewer tokens over two years and 66.1 million over six, leaving supply 4.36% smaller than it would have been under the old cap.

NEAR previously cut its issuance cap from 5% to 2.5% in late October 2025, making Monday's vote the network's second issuance reduction if it takes effect.

In August, Cryptopolitan reported that NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin had sought to establish a fund of about 30 million NEAR — worth roughly $53 million at the time — and use the yield it generated to pay for network security. He dropped the idea on Aug. 20, and Ternullo says his proposal is the result of that decision. Both efforts circled the same question: how NEAR covers its security costs out of token emissions.

Ternullo also points to Solana, where a similar reduction, SGP-0002, passed on Aug. 28 with 67.001% of the stake — part of a broader pattern of major proof-of-stake networks revisiting how much new supply their security budgets require. In August, Galaxy's VP of research Lucas Tcheyan told clients that SOL or ETH would not move on supply cuts alone, because demand is what dictates where those assets trade.