NEAR Moves Annual Issuance Cap From 2.5% to 1.6% in HSP-029 Vote

From 2.5% to 1.6% on House of Stake

NEAR's token supply schedule is moving from a 2.5% annual issuance ceiling toward 1.6%, and the handover runs through governance: voting on proposal HSP-029 opened on House of Stake, the NEAR Protocol network's on-chain governance venue, on Monday, Oct 19, and closes on Nov 2. Sal Ternullo, chief executive of SVRN, introduced the proposal, which would cut the maximum annual issuance of the Layer 1 blockchain by roughly 36%. The reduction is phased rather than abrupt. After approval and a 90-day grace period, the cap steps down by about 3.75 basis points each month, with every change applied at epoch boundaries, the fixed units of chain time on which the network settles parameter updates. Twelve months into the reduction the ceiling stands at 2.05%; at the 24-month mark it reaches the 1.6% target. What stays exactly where it was is the reward split: 90% of newly issued tokens continue to flow to staking participants and 10% to the protocol treasury. The proposal's own simulations measure the supply effect against a 2.5% baseline at roughly 11.8 million tokens suppressed over two years and 66.1 million over six, leaving projected total supply about 4.36% lower after six years. The text is explicit that this is not a burn of existing tokens; the cut applies only to new supply, easing dilution for current holders. The proposal argues the network has moved past the stage that justified high issuance for early ecosystem expansion, and cites fee revenue from NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Intents being directed into token buybacks as the base for lower reliance on new issuance. The vote record, not the proposal text alone, sets the timetable: the window closes on Nov 2, after which the recorded outcome determines whether the 90-day grace clock can start. Governance approval alone does not finish the shift, since validators must separately adopt a network upgrade before the new cap takes effect.

Staking Yield Down 36%

The cost of the slower schedule falls on staking returns. HSP-029's projection puts annual staking APY at about 3.37% once the target cap is in place, down from roughly 5.27%, a decline of about 1.9 percentage points, or 36%. The 5.27% baseline already reflects last year's 2.5% cap, so the projection measures the incremental effect of HSP-029 alone. Fewer new tokens means smaller rewards for the same staked position, including through liquid staking routes that track the protocol's base yield. The same schedule also determines what the treasury receives: with the split unchanged, a 1.6% cap shrinks the treasury's annual allocation in step with staking payouts, which is why the proposal leans on NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Intents fee revenue routed into token buybacks to fill the gap. Validator economics are the second contested point. Using a NEAR price of $4.30, a level covered in our NEAR technical analysis, the proposal's analysis finds that the count of pools able to cover operating costs from their own revenue drops from 170 at the 2.5% cap to 146 at 1.6%; of 405 pools analyzed, 24 would lose economic self-sufficiency. Smaller operators carry the heavier burden if rewards shrink while fixed costs hold, since delegation fee income scales with staking payouts. The move would be the second supply-side cut in about a year: last October, validators approved halving the annual cap from 5% to 2.5%. Comparison with Solana runs through the proposal's case. In August, Solana approved SGP-0002, raising the annual rate of decline in its new issuance from 15% to 30%. The proposal's side projects that NEAR's plan trims staking rewards by less than Solana's change while suppressing long-term supply by more, positioning it within a broader move among major altcoin networks toward slower inflation.

Vote Record Still Open

The vote record is where the outcome actually sits: HSP-029's proposal text and its voting window are public, voting ran from Oct 19 and closes Nov 2, and no result is on the record yet, so neither approval nor rejection is confirmed. Approval would not by itself move the cap, because the validator upgrade is the gate; until that upgrade is adopted, the 1.6% endpoint stays a proposal. Once the schedule completes, the arrangement looks close to today's in shape: the same 90/10 split, the same treasury share, the same epoch-based application, with the ceiling and the yield it funds simply lower.