Originally published at mrnasdog.com/research/near/inflation

NEAR supply is growing, slowly and on purpose. Between Jul 24 and Oct 22 2026, NEAR Protocol created 8,002,980 NEAR in epoch rewards for stakers and its treasury, while the gas burn destroyed 77,175 NEAR. That leaves net growth of +0.61% over 90 days, and we expect about the same in the next 90 days. NEAR has no supply cap: the protocol may add up to 2.5% a year, and a holder vote to lower that to 1.6% closes on Nov 2 2026.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the last 90 days NEAR supply grew +0.61%, from about 1.302B to 1.310B NEAR on-chain. Other market-data trackers show +0.58% for the same stretch, only 0.02 points away from our number, so the page carries no data-conflict flag. Looking ahead, nothing scheduled changes the pace inside the next 90 days, so the forecast is again +0.61%. In one line: NEAR is a steady-issuance proof-of-stake chain whose gas burn cancels only about 1% of new coins, and whose fee buyback keeps the NEAR it buys instead of destroying it.

Sell pressure: where new NEAR comes from

Almost all new NEAR comes from protocol inflation. At the start of every epoch, roughly every 7.3 hours, NEAR Protocol creates new coins worth up to 2.5% of supply a year, scaled to the length of the epoch. Across the 295 epochs in the window that came to 8,002,980 NEAR, about 88,900 NEAR a day. Ninety percent of it goes to validators and the people who stake with them; the other ten percent goes to the protocol treasury, which received 804,108 NEAR in these 90 days. Validators that miss blocks are paid a little less, which is why the real NEAR issuance landed just under the full 2.5% pace. The 5% maximum rate was cut to 2.5% on Oct 30 2025, well before this window, so the whole 90 days ran at the same rate.

Vesting unlocks add 0 NEAR. The allocations from the October 2020 launch finished vesting in October 2025, and the coins still sitting in old lockup accounts already count as circulating, so no unlock cliff is left on the NEAR calendar.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks add 0 NEAR. The NEAR Foundation, the protocol treasury and the buyback wallets all hold coins that are already part of the circulating count, so when any of them pays a grant or sells, NEAR changes hands but no new NEAR reaches the market.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply adds 0 NEAR. There is no court estate or creditor payout of NEAR waiting to be released.

Buy pressure: where new NEAR goes

The only thing that removes NEAR from supply is the protocol fee burn. Seventy percent of every gas fee paid on NEAR Protocol is destroyed, and the other thirty percent goes back to the smart contract that used the gas. In 90 days the gas burn destroyed 77,175 NEAR, and 34,985 NEAR of that came in the last 30 days as activity picked up. Even so, the burn cancels only about 1% of the new NEAR the protocol creates. An approved change removes the thirty percent rebate, so the burn will take 100% of gas once that upgrade reaches the main network.

The programmatic buyback books 0 NEAR, even though it is real. Fees from NEAR Intents, the cross-chain swap system, buy NEAR on the open market. Three project wallets grew from 2.63M to 3.97M NEAR in the window, so 1.34M NEAR was bought. The coins are kept in those wallets, not destroyed, and they still count as circulating, so the NEAR buyback takes nothing out of the count yet. If the project ever burns them, they would move straight into this row.

A Foundation buy adds 0 NEAR: the NEAR Foundation does not buy its own coin. The US spot NEAR fund that began trading in late September 2026, and a listed company that says it holds about 55M NEAR, buy coins that already circulate, so they move NEAR between owners rather than removing it.

A new long-term lock adds 0 NEAR. About 592.87M NEAR is staked, roughly 45% of supply, and more NEAR is locked to vote in governance. Staked and locked NEAR still counts as circulating, so a bigger stake does not shrink the count.

Foundation and overhang

Four groups of NEAR are held by the project side, and we watch each one. The protocol treasury holds 1.44M NEAR, up from 632,859 NEAR on Jul 24 2026, because it collects ten percent of every epoch reward and sent nothing out in the window. The three buyback wallets hold 3.97M NEAR together. The NEAR Foundation’s main known payment wallet holds 14,248 NEAR. The Foundation’s wider reserve has not been reported since early 2024, when it stood at about 305M NEAR, so that part is opaque.

None of these balances is new supply: every one of them is already inside the circulating count. We re-read the treasury and buyback wallets on-chain at every rebuild and walk the Foundation’s public reports. If any of these balances falls between two checks, the outflow goes into Foundation and unscheduled unlocks at the next refresh.

How NEAR compares to other uncapped proof-of-stake chains

NEAR sits in the group of proof-of-stake Layer 1 chains with no hard cap, where new coins pay the people who secure the network. Next to Ethereum, the shape is similar but the size is bigger: Ethereum’s validator pay and fee burn net out to about +0.21% in 90 days, while NEAR’s 2.5% maximum rate gives about +0.61%. Ethereum’s burn also eats a larger share of its issuance, because its fees are much higher than NEAR’s very low gas fees.

Against chains that started with high rates and step them down, such as Solana, NEAR already runs a low and flat rate, and the proposal now in a vote would add a slow step-down of its own, to 1.6% over 24 months. Against exchange-style tokens with burns that remove most new supply, NEAR is different: its fee buyback holds the coins rather than destroying them, so the NEAR buyback supports price through buying, while supply still grows. NEAR has no bitcoin-style halving, no hard cap and no large vesting cliff left; its supply story is one steady, epoch-by-epoch mint.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Nov 2 2026: the holder vote on cutting NEAR’s maximum issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% over 24 months closes. It needs more than two-thirds support, and even then a protocol upgrade must follow, so the first effect inside the next 90 days would be very small.

The 100% gas burn: the next node release, now on the test network, ends the thirty percent gas rebate to contracts. Once validators adopt it on the main network, the NEAR fee burn rises by about 43% at the same activity.

The buyback wallets: if NEAR Protocol ever burns the 3.97M NEAR it has bought, or starts burning new buybacks, that becomes real buy pressure. If the wallets send NEAR out, it would show up as an outflow.

The stake and the treasury: a Foundation transparency report or a large move from the protocol treasury would update the overhang figures above.

Summary

NEAR Protocol grew its supply by +0.61% over the 90 days to Oct 22 2026 and is set to grow about the same in the next 90 days, so supply is growing and projected to keep growing. The mechanism is a steady epoch reward of up to 2.5% a year, 8,002,980 NEAR in this window, against a gas burn of 77,175 NEAR that cancels only about 1% of it. The key risk for holders is that this new NEAR keeps arriving whatever the price does, while the 1.34M NEAR bought back with Intents fees is held, not burned. NEAR has no supply cap; the ceiling is the 2.5% yearly rate, and a vote ending Nov 2 2026 could lower it to 1.6% over two years.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of NEAR, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 22 2026.

Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/near/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.