NEAR annual inflation rate halved, community vote fails but still pushes forward

According to ChainCatcher, citing The Defiant, the NEAR protocol launched a network upgrade on October 30, reducing the annual inflation rate of NEAR tokens from 5% to approximately 2.4%. This upgrade is expected to decrease the number of newly minted tokens by nearly 60 million each year, while simultaneously lowering staking yields. However, the community governance vote originally intended to authorize this change failed to reach the threshold, receiving only 45.06% support, below the technical requirement of 66.67%, resulting in the proposal not being approved.

Despite the failed vote, the NEAR core team still included the inflation reduction in the protocol upgrade, drawing criticism from some validators. The well-known staking service provider Chorus One stated that the core team disregarded the results of the governance vote and forcibly pushed the upgrade, "jeopardizing the integrity of protocol governance," and called on other validators to temporarily refrain from upgrading their nodes, pointing out that this move sets a "dangerous precedent" for governance.