NEAR Protocol is a proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain. It splits its workload across parallel shards, and NEAR's own site lists nine of them, 600 ms blocks and 1.2-second finality. The latest change concerns fees. Since launch, 30% of the gas a contract burns has been paid back to that contract. nearcore 2.14.0 sets that rebate to 0%. As of Oct. 25, 2026, the release has run only on testnet. A tracking issue for NEAR's multi-party computation (MPC) signer, the service behind Chain Signatures, plans the mainnet binary for around Oct. 26 and the mainnet protocol votes for around Nov. 2–3, 2026. Until mainnet adopts that version, the rebate is still paid there.
The newest development: the 30% gas rebate is on its way out
What changes
NEAR's gas documentation still says the protocol rewards developers "by giving contracts 30% of the gas they burn while executing." The NEAR Foundation's token supply post sets out the original split: 30% of transaction fees go to the contracts a transaction touches, and 70% are burned.
The nearcore changelog, under version 2.14.0, records the change as "Remove gas rewards." Executing a FunctionCall no longer pays part of the burned gas back to the contract account, and the burnt_gas_reward parameter goes from 30% (3/10) to 0%. Once it is active, the 30% that used to go to contracts is burned along with the rest.
The governance vote
The 2.14.0-rc.1 release notes tie this change to HSP-027, a proposal in House of Stake, NEAR's governance body. Reports agree that the proposal passed but disagree on the date. Coin Bureau gives June 15, 2026. Other coverage gives late June or early July 2026.
Release timeline
- Sept. 16, 2026: nearcore 2.14.0-rc.1 is published as a testnet prerelease. It moves the protocol from version 85 to 87 and includes the rebate removal. Voting for version 87 on testnet started Sept. 23, 2026, at 00:00 UTC.
- Oct. 14, 2026: 2.14.0-rc.4 moves testnet from protocol 87 to 88, with voting from Oct. 21, 2026. The same day, a tracking issue in NEAR's MPC repository records the plan: "mainnet binary ~Oct 26, mainnet votes 85 → 87 ~Nov 2 and 87 → 88 ~Nov 3."
- Oct. 22, 2026: 2.14.0-rc.6 is the latest published build, and it is still labelled testnet. No final mainnet 2.14.0 release had been published as of Oct. 25, 2026.
NEAR upgrades its protocol through validator voting. The release notes say an upgrade is expected 7–14 hours after a successful voting epoch ends. The planned mainnet dates come from a developer issue, not a formal announcement, so they can move.
Who it affects
Developers whose contracts earned the rebate lose that income once the change is live. The burn itself does not create new revenue. It removes a payout and burns that amount instead.
How NEAR works
Sharding and block times
NEAR splits state and transaction processing across shards. NEAR's blockchain page says the network expanded "to 9 shards" with "zero downtime" and runs "600ms block times. 1.2s finality." NEAR's 2025 review says that going from 6 to 9 shards on mainnet raised throughput by 50%. The nearcore 2.7.0 release notes describe the last step as 8 to 9 shards, so the expansion appears to have happened in stages. On Oct. 25, 2026, NearBlocks showed an average block time of 0.566 seconds.
Epochs and validators
NEAR's documentation says mainnet epochs last 43,200 blocks, "ideally" 7.2 hours at 0.6-second blocks. The top 100 validators produce and validate blocks and chunks. Other validators act as chunk validators. The seat price is set by the 300th-largest staking proposal, with a floor of 25,500 NEAR. NearBlocks listed 412 nodes online on Oct. 25, 2026. Coin Bureau put the active validator set at around 420.
Smart contracts
NEAR's site says developers can "Write in Rust or JS," and contracts run on a WebAssembly runtime.
The NEAR token
Supply
The NEAR Foundation says 1,000,000,000 NEAR were created at genesis on April 22, 2020. Supply has grown through issuance since then, and there is no fixed maximum. On Oct. 25, 2026, NearBlocks reported a total supply of about 1.310 billion NEAR and a circulating supply of about 1.250 billion.
Inflation was halved in October 2025
The nearcore 2.9.0 release notes, published Oct. 21, 2025, say the release "will reduce the maximum inflation of Near Protocol from 5% to 2.5%." Validator voting began Oct. 28, 2025. NEAR's validator documentation now gives the annualized reward target as "2.5% of the total supply." It adds that rewards per staker can be higher when less than 100% of tokens are staked.
Staking and unstaking
NEAR's staking documentation says unstaked tokens "enter a 4-epoch unbonding period before they can be withdrawn." At the ideal 7.2-hour epoch, that is about 28.8 hours. Faster blocks make it shorter. Coin Bureau reported a last-epoch network APY of around 5.27% from a NearBlocks snapshot on Sept. 4, 2026, with roughly 47% of supply staked. The yield an individual staker gets also depends on the validator's commission and performance.
When does NEAR's 30% gas rebate end?
Step through the nearcore 2.14.0 releases to see where the rebate removal stands and what is still planned for mainnet.
- Sept. 16, 20262.14.0-rc.1 published for testnetdone
The testnet prerelease moves the protocol from version 85 to 87 and includes the change that sets the 30% contract gas rebate to 0%. The release notes tie it to HSP-027.
- Sept. 23, 2026Testnet voting for version 87 beginsdone
Validator voting for protocol version 87 on testnet started at 00:00 UTC.
- Oct. 14, 20262.14.0-rc.4 moves testnet to protocol 88done
rc.4 moves testnet from protocol 87 to 88, with voting from Oct. 21, 2026. A tracking issue in NEAR's MPC repository records the mainnet plan the same day.
- Oct. 22, 20262.14.0-rc.6, still labelled testnetdone
rc.6 is the latest published build. No final mainnet 2.14.0 release had been published as of Oct. 25, 2026, so mainnet still pays the rebate.
- ~Oct. 26, 2026Planned mainnet binaryplanned
The MPC tracking issue plans the mainnet binary for around Oct. 26. This date comes from a developer issue, not a formal announcement, so it can move.
- ~Nov. 2, 2026Planned mainnet vote 85 → 87planned
The tracking issue plans the mainnet vote from protocol 85 to 87 for around Nov. 2. The release notes say an upgrade is expected 7–14 hours after a successful voting epoch ends.
- ~Nov. 3, 2026Planned mainnet vote 87 → 88planned
The tracking issue plans the vote from protocol 87 to 88 for around Nov. 3. Once the change is live, the 30% that went to contracts is burned with the remaining 70%.
This timeline shows only the release and voting dates in the article. The mainnet dates are plans from a developer issue and can move, and the timeline does not estimate how much NEAR the change would burn.
NEAR Protocol is a sharded proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain that positions itself as infrastructure for cross-chain transactions and AI agents through products such as NEAR Intents and Chain Signatures.
Cross-chain products: Chain Signatures and NEAR Intents
Chain Signatures
NEAR's documentation says Chain Signatures let a NEAR account, including a smart contract, "sign and execute transactions across many blockchain protocols." A derivation path such as ethereum-1, combined with the NEAR account name, gives an address on another chain. The v1.signer contract takes signing requests. An MPC network produces the signature, and no single node can sign alone. The docs warn that each signature has to encode its target network so it cannot be replayed on another chain.
NEAR Intents and buybacks
NEAR Intents is a cross-chain swap system. Market makers fill users' swap requests, which NEAR calls intents. NEAR's 2025 review, published Jan. 2, 2026, said Intents had passed $7 billion in all-time cross-chain volume. Coin Bureau reported more than $27 billion across 34 chains as of Sept. 4, 2026. Coin Bureau and a DefiLlama dashboard both say an Intents fee switch has funded open-market NEAR purchases since Feb. 23, 2026. Cumulative volume is not revenue kept by the protocol. It does not show how much value reaches the token.
Founders
NEAR was co-founded by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin. Coin Bureau says the two first worked together on an AI-focused project. Polosukhin is one of eight authors of "Attention Is All You Need," the 2017 paper that introduced the Transformer architecture (arXiv, submitted June 12, 2017).
Where to read the protocol itself
The NEAR Enhancement Proposals (NEPs) repository "hosts the current NEAR Protocol specification and standards." Changes to node software are recorded in the nearcore changelog and release notes.
