Author: The Defiant Team
Compiled by Deep潮 TechFlow
DeepChaio Summary: The NEAR chain’s governance body, House of Stake, has approved proposal HSP-027 to eliminate the long-standing “Developer Gas Rebate” mechanism—previously, 30% of gas fees generated by smart contract calls were refunded to contract owners; this percentage will now drop to 0%, with all fees fully burned. Amid widespread recalibration of L1 tokenomics, NEAR’s move not only makes token issuance more deflationary but also reveals how early incentive designs have diverged from real-world business models.
From "30% Refund" to "Full Destruction"
The on-chain governance body of NEAR, House of Stake, has approved proposal HSP-027 to eliminate the protocol's developer gas rebate mechanism. After the change takes effect, all network gas fees will be burned, with none returned to smart contract owners.
Under the current design, 30% of the gas fees generated from calling a smart contract go to the contract owner, while the remaining 70% are burned. According to a delegator who participated in the vote, after the release of nearcore v2.14 (expected around August 2026), the refund percentage will be reduced to 0%, meaning 100% of all gas fees will be burned.
The vote was overwhelmingly in favor: 46 votes representing 4.66 million veNEAR voted yes, while only 2 votes representing 1,819 veNEAR voted no. NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin confirmed the result on Monday, calling it a step toward making the NEAR Protocol simpler and cleaner going forward.
Why change? Complexity and misaligned incentives
NEAR’s developer relations account had previewed this vote as early as early July, reminding developers: “Stop counting this gas reward in your dApp’s budget.” The NEAR governance account described this move as aimed at reducing “protocol complexity and misaligned incentives for developers.”
Polosukhin originally designed this reimbursement mechanism to incentivize developers to build reusable components. However, he noted that today, this mechanism no longer reflects how most NEAR applications generate revenue—projects typically cover gas costs upfront and recoup income through spreads, subscriptions, or advertising, rather than relying on on-chain reimbursements. He also highlighted an accounting issue: this reimbursement is indistinguishable from users’ regular fund deposits.
A stress test of "economic parameter governance"
Polosukhin viewed this vote as a "dry run" for House of Stake taking control of NEAR's core economic parameters. He called it a "great test" before future proposals and expressed delight at having "a clear governance mechanism for NEAR's economic model."
This change makes NEAR’s token issuance more deflationary by eliminating an exception in the fee burn mechanism; however, it does not alter the network’s broader value capture model.
Another round of "slimming down" for L1 tokenomics
In the hyper-competitive L1 landscape of 2026, NEAR’s move is not an isolated case, but part of a broader trend in token economics: shifting from subsidies to deflation. When the early narrative of “rewarding developers with refunds” meets the reality that dApps commonly cover gas costs themselves and generate profits through their products, the refund mechanism becomes a historical burden—increasing protocol complexity while making reconciliation difficult.
Canceling it means NEAR is returning greater control over token supply and demand to the burn mechanism itself—every on-chain activity reduces circulating supply, rather than quietly subsidizing certain participants. For token holders, this represents a clearer deflationary narrative; for developers, it means incentive logic reverts to the simple proposition: can the product itself create value? House of Stake’s formal takeover of core economic parameters also signals that L1 token model iterations will increasingly be decided directly by on-chain governance.