100 percent of NEAR gas fees will be burned: what to watch now

From the coming network upgrade onwards, NEAR will burn every single gas fee. Until now, 30 percent of the fees that accrue when a smart contract is called flowed back to the owner of that contract; the remaining 70 percent left circulation. With version 2.14 of the network software nearcore, that rebate drops to zero. After that, the full amount is burned. Reports put the date at around October 5, 2026, but that is not a firmly committed deadline.

For you as a holder this means two things: the supply of NEAR will shrink faster whenever a lot is happening on the network, and part of the revenue that applications on NEAR could count on until now falls away. The market priced the decision in long ago, but the technical execution is still ahead.

100 percent instead of 70 percent: what nearcore 2.14 changes in the gas model

Gas on NEAR is the computing fee for every transaction. Whoever calls a smart contract pays for it in NEAR. Until now that amount was split: the protocol burned 70 percent, and 30 percent went as a reward to the account that owns the contract being called. Inside the protocol this share sits in a single parameter named burnt_gas_reward, set at three tenths until now. The upgrade sets it to zero.

Technically this is a small intervention, economically a large one. After the change, a function call pays nothing back to the contract account. Every fee a user settles leaves circulation completely and for good. Burned tokens cannot be restored, and there is no office that could reverse the entry.

Implementation hangs on the rollout of the client software. The release notes for nearcore 2.14 list the change as part of the package. Validators have to install the version, and the new rule only takes hold in live operation once enough of them have switched over. Anyone writing a deadline into the calendar is therefore better off writing a week than a day.

HSP-027: how the decision came about in the House of Stake

The decision is not new, only its execution is. The governance body House of Stake adopted proposal HSP-027 on July 8, 2026. The result was unambiguous: 46 votes, which together carried 4.66 million veNEAR, were in favour, while two votes with 1,819 veNEAR between them were against. veNEAR is the voting weight that arises from locked NEAR; whoever locks for longer weighs more heavily.

The reasoning comes from NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin. The rebate was once meant to reward developers for building reusable components. On his account, the mechanism no longer reflects how applications on NEAR earn their money today: projects mostly cover their users' gas costs themselves and bring in revenue through spreads, subscriptions or advertising. Polosukhin called the vote a good test of governance ahead of further proposals, and he said he was pleased to be steering NEAR's economics explicitly through governance from now on. The protocol gains in simplicity, and some contract operators lose a source of income.

That a body votes on a protocol parameter and the result lands in a client version four weeks later is the actual process behind the headline. What matters in it for you is that a vote of locked tokens stands behind the rule, not a company decision. By the same route it can be changed back.

Deflation by usage: the burn hangs on network load

A higher burn share does not lower supply automatically. It lowers it only to the extent that the network is used. What gets burned is what accrues in fees, and fees accrue when transactions run. If activity stays low, the additional effect stays small as well. If it rises, the loss of the rebate works like an amplifier: out of every euro in fees, 100 percent instead of 70 percent will disappear in future.

Around 1.308 billion NEAR are currently in circulation, and there is no fixed upper limit. That is what sets it apart from Bitcoin: with NEAR, scarcity arises from the running ratio between issuance and burning, without a fixed wall in the code. It is exactly this ratio that the upgrade shifts, without touching issuance.

How you can read the effect

The figure that counts is the total of fees per day, not the price. A network with many small transactions burns more than one with a few large ones. At NEAR the main driver is held to be the Intents system for swaps across chains, whose volume has risen from under one billion to more than 32 billion dollars within twelve months according to industry reports. How this area works and where its catches lie is something we took apart in our piece on NEAR Intents.

NEAR price at $5.46: 11 percent in a day, 175 percent in 30 days

On Thursday morning NEAR is trading at $5.46, the equivalent of 4.83 euros. According to CoinGecko data that is 11.3 percent more than 24 hours earlier. On a weekly view the gain sits between 22 and 27 percent depending on the point of measurement, and over 30 days at around 175 percent. Market capitalisation therefore comes to about $7.14 billion, rank 21 among all crypto assets, on trading volume of around $1.59 billion in 24 hours.

This run puts the news in its place. NEAR is still around 73 percent away from its all-time high of $20.44 from January 2022. But a threefold gain within a month also means that a large share of the most recent buyers are sitting on profits and can sell at any moment. Whoever gets in now is not buying into a quiet situation.

Part of the push comes from outside. Since September 29, 2026, a Bitwise spot ETF on NEAR has traded on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR. Figures for the first trading day diverge: an inflow of $35.5 million and a trading volume of $15.1 million are reported. In both cases it is a double-digit million sum on day one. What this instrument means for a portfolio in Germany, and why you cannot simply buy it here, is set out in our text on the NEAR ETF NRR.

Buying route in Germany: MiCA authorisation before the fee comparison

For access to NEAR itself, a clear order has applied in Germany since the MiCA regulation. What counts first is whether the provider holds an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider in the EU and is supervised by BaFin or another European authority. Only after that is it worth looking at spreads, order fees and withdrawal costs. A platform without European authorisation can close access for German users tomorrow, and a cheap tariff will not help you then. Which trading venues clear this hurdle is shown by our overview of crypto exchanges compared.

Staking and validators: the loss of the rebate does not hit delegators

This is where the most common mix-up arises, so one step at a time. The rebate of 30 percent went to the owners of smart contracts, that is, to the operators of applications. It did not go to validators, and not to users who delegate their NEAR to a validator. The reward for staking comes out of the protocol's issuance and is a different pot. The upgrade does not touch that pot.

In practice that means your staking income does not fall because of the change. Anyone running an application on NEAR that has covered part of its costs through the gas rebate until now, by contrast, has to recalculate. For holders the second group is only of indirect interest, namely when a heavily used application changes its prices or leaves the network as a result.

Staking through an exchange or directly with a validator

When you stake through a trading platform, the platform keeps the keys and often part of the reward. When you delegate directly to a validator, control stays with you, but you carry the risk of picking a validator with poor availability. In both cases an unbonding period applies, during which the tokens are not available. How the terms look at various providers is something we have set side by side in our overview of staking platforms.

Holding period: one year decides whether your NEAR gains are tax free

In Germany, gains from the sale of crypto assets count as private disposal transactions. If you sell within a year of buying, the gain is taxable at your personal income tax rate; below an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros per year it stays tax free. After a holding period of more than one year the gain is tax free regardless of its size.

With a coin that has almost tripled within 30 days, that is no side issue. A sale in October 2026 falls fully into the tax net if the purchase dates from September 2026. Anyone who wants to use the deadline needs proof of the purchase date and purchase price for every single tranche. Staking rewards follow their own rules here and count as other income in the year they are received.

The gas model upgrade itself does not trigger any taxable event for you. What gets burned is fees inside the protocol, not tokens out of your wallet. So there is no inflow you would have to declare, and no acquisition that starts a new deadline.

Leverage and liquidation: perp positions are especially exposed ahead of the upgrade

After a rise of this magnitude, leveraged positions are the most sensitive spot in the market. A perpetual future on NEAR costs funding on an ongoing basis, and at a leverage of ten a countermove of ten percent is enough to use up the margin. NEAR gained more than 11 percent on Thursday alone; a move of that size in the other direction is just as much within the realm of the possible.

Around an upgrade a second point comes into play. Dates that are imprecisely set produce positions that bet on a date. If the rollout shifts by days, those bets come to nothing, and the unwinding moves the price more than the technical change itself.

Custody: hardware wallet, exchange account and control over the keys

Anyone who wants to hold NEAR for months in order to reach the holding period has a custody problem to solve. On an exchange account the tokens sit within the platform's reach. That is convenient for staking and for quick sales, but it exposes you to the risk that the platform fails or halts withdrawals. On a hardware wallet the keys sit with you, but you have to keep the recovery words safe and separate.

An intermediate solution that has proven itself is splitting things up: the portion you trade or stake with on the platform, the holding earmarked for the deadline in self-custody. What matters is that every movement between the two worlds is documented, because the tax office will want to see the acquisition when you later sell.

What the burn does not deliver

A complete fee burn is not a promise about the price. It shifts one quantity in the supply, and whether that shows up in the price depends on demand and on network load. Projects with deflationary mechanisms have both risen and fallen in the past. Anyone taking the change as an argument to buy should measure it against the total of fees, not against the headline.

Just as little does the decision settle the open question of issuance. As long as new NEAR come into being and no upper limit exists, the net effect remains a calculation with two entries. The upgrade only improves one of them.

NEAR gas fees: the key points for your decision

1. Check access before you think about fees. Take a trading venue with European authorisation, so that your access does not hang on a supervisory decision. The candidates are listed in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Assess staking separately from the change. Your rewards come out of issuance and remain untouched by the loss of the gas rebate; compare unbonding periods and deductions instead, in the overview of staking platforms.
3. Record the purchase date and purchase price for each tranche. Without that proof the one-year deadline cannot be demonstrated later; a tracker handles it on an ongoing basis, see tax tools and portfolio trackers.

The date itself is best treated as a window rather than a cut-off day. The decision is confirmed and the delivery is scheduled; only the rollout among the validators turns both into the new rule. Whoever builds positions beforehand builds them on an expectation, and whoever waits for the change misses no mechanism, at most a move.

How the proposal was argued in detail and how the vote turned out is documented at The Cryptonomist.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)