NEAR is today launching Citizens House, a new governance identity verification system that will enable community members to participate in on-chain governance decisions. This system establishes NEAR Verified Accounts which will be used for NEAR Blockchain Governance.
The first governance action using this system will be a vote on the proposed transfer of assets from the NEAR Community Purpose Trust to the NEAR House of Stake Foundation.
Timeline
Period
Dates
Duration
Verification Period
February 2–16, 2026
14 days
What is a NEAR Verified Account?
A NEAR Verified Account is a NEAR account that has successfully completed an automated verification process, confirming that the account is controlled by a unique, identifiable person.
Creating a NEAR Verified Account enables you to be counted within the NEAR Quorum Requirement in respect of votes on NEAR governance decisions that must be made on a “one person, one vote” basis.
Create your NEAR Verified Account
Go to https://citizenshouse.org to create your NEAR Verified Account. You have until 23:59 UTC on February 16th to complete the process.
Thank you very much for the excellent application and for the work you’ve done to build it with common sense and in full respect of both the spirit and the letter of the rules. It’s genuinely appreciated by the community.
Regarding the current vote, I’d like to highlight and invite into the discussion @illia and @eaglelex
A genuine community vote should always begin with real choice, not with a framed or predetermined outcome. If the goal is truly to understand the will of the community, the process cannot be limited to a single binary decision that effectively nudges community-allocated funds back under NEAR Foundation control via the House of Stake.
For the vote to be fully representative, it should include three clearly and transparently formulated options:
Return the funds to the NEAR Foundation (House of Stake)
Explicitly stated as returning community-allocated funds back under NEAR Foundation control.
Keep the funds within the Community Treasury
Holding them until the most appropriate time and conditions for their use.
Transfer the funds to a new, independent, community-governed entity
Managed in a decentralized manner by representatives of major ecosystem communities and products (for example NEARLegion leaders, MetaPoll, Shitzu, Jambo, Meteor Wallet, HOT Wallet (top HOT holders for instance), Sweat, Aurora, and others, with transparent governance and collective decision-making over the use of these funds.
I’m personally support the 3rd one.
At the same time, it’s important to note that NEAR Foundation marketing resources are actively being used to encourage participation in this vote, while the proposed destination of the funds — the House of Stake — is fully controlled by the NEAR Foundation, from the HoS Foundation to the Screening and Security Councils. Additionally, the current House of Stake mandate does not include community grants or direct funding for community initiatives, which is a crucial detail that does not appear to be clearly disclosed in the voting context.
All of this is shared in the spirit of openness, transparency, and genuine decentralization — values that the NEAR ecosystem has always stood for. Thank you for taking the time to consider this perspective.
How about a vote from people who’ve actually built things in the ecosystem?
The entire concept is backwards. The idea that you’d value KYC (not happening) over actual ecosystem contributions is illustrative of bureaucratic mismanagement.