NEAR Protocol · NEAR

NEAR mints new tokens every epoch to pay validators. The chain itself was asked this build what rate is running, and it answered 2.5% a year — half the old 5%, cut in late 2025. Measured against the chain's own supply reading at both ends of the window, that produced about 7.95M new NEAR in 90 days, of which roughly a tenth lands in the protocol's ecosystem account rather than with validators. There is no maximum supply, so this stream never stops.

Nothing left to unlock. NEAR's original five-year distribution to team, backers and foundation ran out in late 2025, and the unlock trackers now read NEAR as fully unlocked. Every NEAR that exists already trades, so there is no locked allocation releasing on a schedule and no cliff inside this window.

Four team-controlled balances are watched here. The buyback multisig holds 0.81M NEAR, up from 0.18M three months ago — bought, not released. The protocol's ecosystem account holds 0.88M and is still growing on its share of the mint. Two fund-admin community accounts hold 2.09M between them. A proposal floated on Aug 4 2026 would seed a 30M NEAR sovereign fund out of treasury reserves, but it has had no vote and no execution. All of it already sits inside the circulating count, and no market release was observed this window — monitored, not projected.

No bankruptcy estate, trustee schedule or court-ordered distribution applies to NEAR.

Since Feb 23 2026 the revenue NEAR keeps from Intents, its cross-chain swap layer, is spent buying NEAR. The number that matters is the kept revenue, not the headline fee take — users paid about 9.0M dollars of fees over the window but only 1.8M of that, about a fifth, is NEAR's own and reaches the buyback. Reading the buyback wallet at both ends of the window, it grew from 0.18M to 0.81M NEAR: 0.63M of real buying, all of it arriving straight from the Intents contract. The bought NEAR is held in that multisig — not burned, not staked — so it leaves the tradable float without shrinking total supply.

NEAR destroys 70% of every gas fee, with the other 30% rebated to contract owners — the chain confirmed that split is still what is running today. Because the gas price sits at the protocol floor, the burn came to only about 0.06M NEAR over 90 days, small next to the mint. A vote passed on Jul 3 2026 ends the rebate so 100% of contract gas burns; the client carrying it had not reached mainnet at this build.

No discretionary open-market buying by the NEAR Foundation beyond the revenue-funded Intents buyback already counted above. No separate accumulation programme was observed in the window — monitored.

NEAR staking is not a lock — a delegator unbonds within days — so it is not booked here. Governance locking sits in per-user sub-accounts with no announced release quantum, and no new lockup contract was deployed in the window.