TL;DR
NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin has proposed creating a protocol sovereign fund that would hold NEAR tokens, earn yield, and use the proceeds to finance essential ecosystem services. The idea borrows from sovereign wealth funds in Norway and Singapore, as well as university endowments designed to turn cyclical income into durable assets. The proposal reframes protocol revenue as permanent productive capital rather than money to spend or destroy immediately. It is meant to improve the long-term sustainability of NEAR’s tokenomics while building a funding base capable of surviving changing market conditions over many future market cycles.
The treasury would combine the current and future protocol treasury with revenue already earned and income generated later. It would launch with roughly 30 million NEAR, valued near $53 million at the reported price. A portion of the yield would support the Validator Support Program, multiparty computation providers, security, and other public goods. NEAR would finance recurring network costs from investment returns instead of relying only on continuing inflation. House of Stake delegates, operating through the protocol’s stake-weighted governance system, would participate using existing mechanisms rather than a newly created administrative structure across the ecosystem.
Polosukhin argued that using ecosystem revenue to buy NEAR and directing part of the resulting yield toward public goods is better aligned with long-term needs than burning tokens. A burn can offset inflation in the short term, he said, but creates no future financing base if inflation ends. The sovereign fund is designed to convert current revenue into a reserve that can keep paying for security later. Additional revenue and emissions could be directed into the vehicle under governance parameters, gradually reducing effective inflation without abruptly removing the resources that validators and service providers require.
If the model succeeds, Polosukhin believes NEAR could gradually move toward a fixed token supply and transition validator rewards to the fund-based system. That possibility would connect monetary policy, ecosystem spending, and treasury management in one long-term framework. The proposal aims to strengthen NEAR economics while preserving reliable funding for public goods and core network needs. Still, it remains a proposal rather than a mandate. Polosukhin invited community feedback for two weeks and is discussing the concept with stakeholders, leaving governance participants to determine whether an endowment-style model can outperform burns and inflation over time.
