NEAR Tokenomics After the Halving. The 5% to 2.5% Inflation Cut in Real Numbers

NEAR cut its maximum annual inflation from 5% to 2.5% in the nearcore 2.9.0 release. On a circulating supply of about 1.31B tokens, that is the difference between roughly $234M and $117M of new supply per year at current prices. The upgrade passed through community proposals and shipped alongside reward changes for small validators and veNEAR holders.

The dilution arithmetic

Most tokenomics writeups stop at the percentage. Do the dollar math instead. At a $4.7B market cap, 2.5% inflation is about $117M of new tokens per year. For the price to merely hold, outside buyers need to absorb $117M of sell pressure annually, roughly $320k per day, from stakers alone.

Now compare that to chain gas fees, which DefiLlama tracks at $2,000 to $3,200 per day, around $58k over the trailing 30 days. Gas fees alone cover about 1% of the daily issuance-equivalent. That ratio is the number separating real fee-backed tokens from inflation-funded ones, and NEAR sits clearly in the second category at the chain-fee level.

Where the counter-argument lives

The protocol's answer is that chain fees are the wrong denominator. NEAR Intents and the AI Agent Market generate fees that flow to buybacks rather than to the base-layer gas metric. The revenue dashboard claims buybacks are approaching an issuance crossover. We could not independently verify the buyback flow from a second source, so treat the crossover claim as protocol-asserted, not audited.

Our verdict

The halving is genuinely positive for holders. It cuts the bar external demand has to clear by half. But the honest read is that NEAR still needs fee revenue to grow by two orders of magnitude before token value capture is fee-backed rather than narrative-backed. TVL at $185M against a $4.7B market cap tells the same story from the DeFi side.

Sources

[1] NEAR Foundation, halving upgrade, near.org/blog/supporting-community-proposals-to-upgrade-near-tokenomics-halving-inflation-and-introducing-rewards-to-support-small-validators-and-venear-holders [2] nearcore v2.9.0, github.com/near/nearcore/releases/tag/2.9.0 [3] DefiLlama NEAR chain fees, api.llama.fi/summary/fees/near [4] CoinGecko NEAR supply and market cap, api.coingecko.com/api/v3/coins/near [5] NEAR revenue dashboard, revenue.near.org