NEAR Protocol just rewrote its economic rulebook. The protocol’s on-chain governance body, House of Stake, passed proposal HSP-027 between June 20 and 27, 2026, voting to eliminate the developer gas rebate entirely. Starting with a nearcore upgrade expected around August 2026, every eligible execution fee on the network will be burned rather than partially returned to smart-contract owners.
NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin confirmed the vote’s outcome, endorsing the shift toward full fee burns as a step in the right direction for the NEAR token’s long-term economics.
What was the rebate, and why kill it now?
The 30% developer gas rebate let smart-contract owners reclaim a slice of the gas fees their contracts generated. The average rebate per contract fell from roughly 27.6 NEAR in June 2025 to just 1 to 5 NEAR per month by 2026.
Proposal HSP-027, authored by NEAR One’s Anton Astafiev, made the case that the rebate had diluted to the point of irrelevance. No significant dissent was recorded during the discussion period.
