NEAR Protocol to End Developer Gas Rebates With Nearcore Upgrade Targeted for August 2026

NEAR Protocol is set to retire its developer gas rebate program after its onchain governance group, House of Stake, approved proposal HSP027 during a June 20–27, 2026 voting window. The change is expected to take effect with the nearcore v2.14 upgrade, currently slated for around August 2026. Once implemented, eligible execution fees that were previously shared with smart contract owners will instead be fully burned, removing NEAR from circulation. NEAR cofounder Illia Polosukhin confirmed the outcome and backed the move, describing full fee burns as a positive step for the token's long-term economic design. The rebate being removed was a 30% developer gas rebate, which allowed smart contract owners to reclaim a portion of gas fees generated by their contracts. Governance materials cited a sharp decline in practical impact: the average rebate per contract dropped from about 27.6 NEAR in June 2025 to roughly 1 to 5 NEAR per month by 2026. The proposal, authored by NEAR One's Anton Astafiev, argued the incentive had become too small to matter, and the discussion period saw no meaningful dissent. Under the prior model, 30% of eligible execution fees were recycled back to contract developers. Under the updated model, those same fees will be burned instead. For builders, any revenue assumptions tied to gas rebates will end when nearcore v2.14 goes live. The community framing around HSP027 emphasized that, for most teams, monthly rebates of 1 to 5 NEAR were not worth the accounting effort and that the change encourages more durable business models. HSP027 passed without significant opposition. Market participants will be watching closely after the August 2026 nearcore v2.14 rollout, with early onchain burn data serving as the first real-world indicator of how much additional supply reduction the policy shift creates.