NEAR Climbs 5% as Issuance-Cut Vote Nears November 2 Close

Published October 31, 2026, 10:00 PM PKT. Based on House of Stake proposal HSP-029 as published on the NEAR governance forum and reported by TokenPost on October 22, 2026, on live Binance NEARUSDT data and CoinGecko market data recorded October 31, 2026, and on October 30 to 31, 2026 coverage from ad-hoc-news and CoinStats. The vote outcome had not been confirmed as of October 31, and the issuance figures are the proposal's own modeled estimates, not enacted network parameters.

NEAR Protocol climbed about 5% on October 31, 2026, topping CoinGecko's trending searches, as a governance vote that would slow the network's token supply heads toward its close. Binance's NEARUSDT pair traded at $4.527, up 5.13% in 24 hours, with an intraday range of $4.239 to $4.531 and about $74.8 million in 24-hour quote volume, according to Binance public data. CoinGecko recorded NEAR at $4.52, up 5.23% in 24 hours, with a market capitalisation of about $5.92 billion, 24-hour volume near $524 million, and a rank of 20th by market capitalisation. The catalyst is dated, not speculative: voting on House of Stake proposal HSP-029 closes on November 2, 2026 at 16:48 UTC, and the ballot would cut NEAR's maximum annual issuance from 2.5% to 1.6%. The token is up 2.61% over seven days but still down 8.06% over 30 days, according to CoinGecko, so the October 31 move is a rebound inside a month-long slide, not a fresh uptrend on its own.

A vote that closes on November 2

HSP-029 opened on October 19, 2026 and runs for exactly 14 days, closing November 2 at 16:48 UTC, or 11:48 a.m. Eastern Time, according to the on-chain voting record and TokenPost's October 22 report. The vote is weighted by veNEAR, the locked-NEAR voting balance used by House of Stake, and it carries an approval threshold of 66.67%, a supermajority, with a 35% quorum threshold, according to the on-chain record summarised in a plain-English guide to the proposal. The proposal is listed on House of Stake as proposal 29, and its author is named as Sal Ternullo, chief executive of SVRN (OceanPal Inc., NASDAQ: SVRN). The proposal's own conflicts section states that SVRN holds approximately 55 million NEAR, more than 90% of which is staked, a disclosure that matters because a lower issuance rate directly changes the economics of large stakers. NEAR's official site describes House of Stake as the system for onchain ratification of protocol upgrades, economic parameters and treasury decisions, and the vote is the governance track for exactly that kind of parameter change.

From 2.5 percent to 1.6 percent, over 24 months

The cut is designed to be gradual. After ratification, a 90-day grace period would pass before the ramp starts, giving wallets, exchanges, custodians and staking providers a full quarter to update, and the ceiling would then step down over 24 months at roughly 3.75 basis points per month, applied each epoch, with no sudden step dates, according to the proposal summary. The split of new issuance would stay the same: about 90% to staking participants and 10% to the protocol treasury. The proposal's own model puts gross staking yield at 5.268% at the current ceiling and 3.372% at the 1.6% target, a trade-off that is the heart of the debate: non-staking holders gain from slower dilution, while stakers accept a lower nominal yield. The proposal's simulations, as reported by COINOTAG, estimate about 11.8 million fewer NEAR tokens issued over two years and 66.1 million fewer over six years compared with a 2.5% baseline. For scale, TokenPost reported on October 22 that NEAR averaged a 46% staking rate in the third quarter of 2026, with gross annualised yield edging down to 4.87%, and that the network's target inflation rate had already fallen from 5% to 2.5% in the fourth quarter of 2025 through its Halving Upgrade. HSP-029 would extend that same direction of travel, not reverse it.

Approval alone changes nothing yet

The most important caveat in the whole story is procedural. A House of Stake approval would not change the live issuance rate by itself, because the issuance cap is a protocol setting, and validators would have to adopt the change through a separate protocol upgrade before the lower ceiling could take effect, according to TokenPost, CryptoSlate and COINOTAG. The protocol configuration still showed a 2.5% maximum annual issuance rate on October 22, 2026, according to CryptoSlate. As of the October 31 publication date, the vote outcome had not been confirmed in the coverage reviewed, so readers should treat November 2 as the first of three milestones: the governance result, then any validator upgrade, then evidence that network usage and fee revenue can support the lower-issuance model. The vote also lands against a security backdrop the site has already covered: NEAR Intents, the network's cross-chain service, suffered an October 1 exploit involving about $3.8 million, according to CoinDesk, and the funds were later recovered. The issuance vote is a separate question from that incident, but it explains why supply and security are being weighed together in NEAR coverage this week.

The price tape behind the vote

The market context gives the vote its timing. NEAR fell 8.81% to $4.32 on Binance on October 29, according to CoinStats, and traders flagged $4.00 as support with $4.50 to $4.80 as resistance, while the October 31 rebound carried the token back above $4.50 intraday. Analyst Michaël van de Poppe, writing on October 31, said NEAR had flipped $4.20 into support after completing its post-$5 correction and that a decisive move above $4.60 would open the path to fresh fourth-quarter highs, with the token sitting at $4.46 on the four-hour chart inside a bearish structure defined by the 50-period exponential moving average at $4.53 and the 200-period average at $4.57, according to Blockchain.News. That $4.60 line is the level to watch into the vote close. The rebound also has fresh fundamental company: on October 30, NEAR announced NEAR AI Red, a security program giving vetted teams early access to AI models, and Coinfomania reported the same day that NEAR partnered with Ondo to bring tokenized US stocks and ETFs to its platform, according to CoinStats. Earlier in the week, NEAR launched ANT perpetual futures tied to Anthropic's anticipated pre-IPO share price on October 27, and Gemini listed NEAR on October 26. None of those items alone explains a 5% day, but together they give the trending interest a real news base rather than a bare price spike.

This article is news reporting and is not investment advice.

Sources

• House of Stake proposal HSP-029, NEAR governance forum, via TokenPost, October 22, 2026 (primary source for the 2.5% to 1.6% issuance cut, the 24-month ramp, the 90-day grace period, the 90% to stakers and 10% to treasury split, the November 2, 2026 at 16:48 UTC close, the 66.67% approval threshold and 35% quorum, the modeled 5.268% to 3.372% gross staking yield, and the requirement of a separate validator protocol upgrade)
• Binance public data, NEARUSDT, October 31, 2026 (primary source for the $4.527 price, 5.13% 24-hour gain, $4.239 to $4.531 intraday range, 17.18 million NEAR volume and about $74.8 million quote volume; last hourly candle verified fresh at build time)
• CoinGecko market data, October 31, 2026 (primary source for the $4.52 price, 5.23% 24-hour gain, 2.61% seven-day gain, 8.06% 30-day decline, about $5.92 billion market capitalisation, about $524 million 24-hour volume, rank 20, and the trending-searches placement)
• TokenPost, NEAR Averaged 46% of Supply Staked in Q3 as Issuance Cut Goes to Vote (published October 22, 2026, secondary source for the third-quarter 46% staking rate, 4.87% gross annualised yield, the fourth-quarter 2025 target inflation cut from 5% to 2.5%, and the November 2 at 11:48 a.m. ET close)
• ad-hoc-news, NEAR issuance vote closes November 2: What it means for the NEAR Protocol price (published October 31, 2026, secondary source for the vote close, the issuance cut mechanics, and the Intents exploit context)
• CoinStats, NEAR Protocol (NEAR) News Today: Why NEAR Is Up, 31 October 2026 (secondary source for the October 30 NEAR AI Red program, the October 30 Ondo tokenized stocks and ETFs partnership, the October 27 ANT perpetual futures launch, the October 26 Gemini listing, and the October 29 fall to $4.32)
• Blockchain.News, NEAR: Michaël Flags Q4 Breakout Above $4.60 (published October 31, 2026, secondary source for the $4.20 support flip, the $4.60 breakout level, and the four-hour moving average structure)