NEAR (NEAR) tokenomics

Issuance Mechanism

NEAR Protocol utilizes an inflationary model designed to secure the network and reward participants. At its launch in April 2020, the protocol had an initial total supply of 1.00 billion NEAR tokens. As of December 18, 2024, the total supply has grown to approximately 1.23 billion NEAR.

The issuance is governed by the following parameters:

• Annual Inflation: The protocol maintains a fixed annual inflation rate of approximately 5.00% of the total supply.
• Distribution of New Issuance: Of the newly minted tokens, 90.00% are allocated to validator staking and delegator rewards. The remaining 10.00% is directed to the protocol’s treasury to support ecosystem development.
• Deflationary Offset: NEAR incorporates a burning mechanism where 70.00% of all transaction fees (gas) are burned. The remaining 30.00% of fees are rewarded to the creators of the smart contracts involved in the transaction. At high levels of network activity, the amount of NEAR burned could potentially exceed the 5.00% issuance, making the protocol deflationary.
• Reward Frequency: Validator rewards are distributed per epoch, which occurs approximately twice per day.

Allocation Mechanism

The initial 1.00 billion NEAR tokens were distributed across several categories to ensure ecosystem growth and long-term sustainability. The project team manages several of these allocations:

Additional funding initiatives have been launched since the TGE, including an $800.00 million ecosystem growth fund announced in October 2021. This was further broken down into $350.00 million for Proximity Labs, $250.00 million for existing projects, $100.00 million for startup grant pools, and $100.00 million for regional funds.

Usage and Incentive Mechanism

The NEAR token serves multiple critical functions within the ecosystem:

• Network Fees (Gas): NEAR is used to pay for transaction processing, smart contract deployment, and data storage.
• Validator Staking: To participate in the Thresholded Proof of Stake (TPoS) consensus, nodes must stake NEAR. The "seat price" for becoming a validator is dynamically calculated based on the total amount of NEAR staked by others. As of late 2024, this price was approximately 11,110 to 14,226 NEAR.
• Delegation: Token holders who do not wish to run their own nodes can delegate their tokens to validator staking pools to earn a portion of the inflationary rewards.
• Storage Staking: Smart contract deployers must stake NEAR tokens proportional to the amount of data their contracts store on-chain. As of December 2024, the rate was set at 1 NEAR per 100kb of data. These tokens are locked as long as the data is stored.
• Developer Incentives: A unique feature of NEAR is the 30.00% gas fee rebate provided to smart contract creators, incentivizing developers to build high-usage applications.

Locking Mechanism and Unlocking Time

NEAR Protocol employs various locking mechanisms for different participant groups:

Staking and Governance Locks

• Consensus Locking: Tokens committed to staking for consensus are effectively locked for at least three days.
• Vote-Escrow NEAR (veNEAR): A future governance proposal (House of Stake) suggests a locking mechanism where users can lock NEAR for veNEAR. The lock duration would range from a minimum of 3 months to a maximum of 48 months. Longer lock periods grant higher voting power and a larger share of treasury rewards (e.g., 1.00 NEAR locked for 48 months yields 3.00 veNEAR).

Vesting and Genesis Unlocks

Vesting schedules for initial allocations began at the token launch in April 2020. While specific individual wallet addresses are not publicly disclosed, the schedules generally applied to:

• Private Rounds: Tokens sold in private rounds (such as the $21.60 million round led by A16z) were subject to vesting schedules that commenced at TGE.
• Lockup Contracts: During the transition to the community-governed phase, an on-chain vote by validators was required to enable transfers. Once two-thirds of the staked funds voted in favor, transfers were enabled, and lockup contracts began releasing tokens according to their specific schedules.

Information regarding specific current or future individual token unlock dates for the entire supply was not available.