Thanks for opening this discussion Sal! A few concerns before next vote.
1. What is the token for in the endgame?
If issuance eventually goes to zero, what drives demand for NEAR beyond Intents buybacks? “Store of value” needs a real use case behind it, and I don’t see one defined yet.
2. The last cut didn’t deliver what we hoped.
The 2025 halving came together with veNEAR rewards and a subsidy program for small validators. A year later, House of Stake holds around 5M NEAR, less than 1% of all staked NEAR, and most small validators still can’t run without NF delegation or subsidies. Before cutting again, we should understand why.
3. Validator growth isn’t proof of resilience.
Much of the growth after the last cut came from Meta Pool’s delegation programs, not from independent operators joining on their own. The set has also dropped from 439 to 413 since April. How would a 1.6% cap affect Meta Pool’s programs (or others) and the small validators who were already struggling at 2.5%?
4. Who is deciding? A recurring question
If the body voting on monetary policy (or any others) represents less than 1% of stake, how representative is this decision for the whole network?
My position: leaning no.
I’m not against lower issuance. But we shouldn’t cut the security budget (Part 1) before we have a clear plan for what replaces it (Part 2). Without that full picture, I’d vote no.