The NEAR protocol's on-chain governance body, House of Stake, has passed proposal HSP-027, eliminating the developer gas rebate program. NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin confirmed the outcome Monday. The change redirects all network gas fees to a burn mechanism, departing from the previous model that partly returned fees to smart-contract owners.
Previously, smart-contract owners received a portion of gas fees generated by their contracts—an incentive designed to foster development on the NEAR network. Under HSP-027, those rebated fees will now be permanently removed from circulation, increasing scarcity of the NEAR token.
The shift alters the economics for developers building on NEAR. Rebates had been factored into operational models for contract deployment and maintenance. The governance body expects new incentive structures to emerge or existing ones to be re-evaluated across the ecosystem.
Burning all gas fees introduces direct deflationary pressure on NEAR token supply. Increased network activity will now correlate with a faster token burn rate, aligning NEAR's tokenomics with other Layer 1 protocols that use fee-burning to reduce circulating supply.
The House of Stake, composed of key protocol stakeholders, holds direct authority over protocol parameters and economic models. HSP-027 required substantial community consensus and voting participation to pass.
