WITHDRAWN: HSP-XXX: Establish House of Stake Operational & Proposal Co-Funding Budget for 2026

[AK_HoG]

Hi @yadirab thanks again for your questions on the Skin-in-the-Game mechanism, they are very relevant, happy to provide answers.

@yadirab

What is HoS investing in? Is co-funding scoped to proposals that advance a user-owned future for NEAR: protocol decentralization, public goods, user-controlled infrastructure, developer ownership, or is it indiscriminate?

HoS’s investment scope is defined by its mandate as NEAR’s Treasury Governance Engine (see House of Stake 2.0).
The Constitutional Documents, which define the mandate-guided evolution of HoS, were ratified by tokenholders in February.

The mandate is intentionally narrow and focused on economics. Every proposal has to align with it, and the Screening Committee makes sure that bar is met.

According to this mandate, House of Stake will focus on proposals around Ecosystem Value Accrual & Economic Sustainability:

• Exploring approaches to ecosystem value accrual
• Exploring approaches to managing NEAR ecosystem assets in the long-term interest of the protocol. (such as top-level accounts)
• Evaluating approaches to long-term economic sustainability, including responsible governance of protocol economic parameters.

This blog post and this forum post provide more details.

Co-funding scope. The 15% co-fund applies only to funding proposals that are approved through HoS governance in Season #1. By definition, these proposals have already passed mandate alignment via the Screening Committee. So the co-fund isn’t indiscriminate, it follows the mandate filter.

@yadirab

What’s the ROI? How does HoS define and measure return on its co-investment, and how do those returns flow back into future allocation decisions?

The Skin-in-the-Game mechanism only provides co-funding to proposals that have passed. That means it’s ultimately up to tokenholders to evaluate whether a proposal meets their expectations in terms of ROI and overall value to the ecosystem—and to vote accordingly.

We intentionally don’t define a standard ROI/KPI. If you look at past proposals, they differ quite a bit:

• HSP-003 focused on increasing the amount of NEAR locked in the system, measuring success through things like total veNEAR supply and the percentage of staked NEAR migrated to House of Stake (see details here).
• HSP-007 focused on building out MPC node infrastructure, with success measured through metrics like monthly active MPC node count (see details here).

Even with just these two examples, the difference in goals and KPIs is clear. Because of that, it makes more sense for proposal authors to define their own KPIs, explain the expected ROI of HoS’s Skin-in-the-Game, and discuss it with tokenholders. Tokenholders can then make an informed decision when voting. Once a proposal passes, and only then, the mechanism is triggered and funds are disbursed from the Co-Funding Pool.

@yadirab

What is HoS actually doing with the capital? Where does it sit, who controls it, how is it disbursed, and how is it reported?

The latest proposal update adds more detail here:

• Quarterly reporting — A comprehensive report covering KPIs, budget usage, buffer utilization, co-funding allocations, and functional independence.

This will include HoS wallet addresses so fund flows can be tracked transparently. It also makes sense to hold the budget allocated for co-funding in a separate address for clarity.

@yadirab

As HoS matures, it would strengthen the institution to have additional operational checks, for example, Foundation Directors or the Security Council jointly accountable for Skin-in-the-Game disbursement decisions, not only consulted on treasury custody.

In fact, the process already includes these checks:

• Whether a proposal should pass, and receive HoS co-funding, is decided by tokenholders through the full, ratified governance process. That’s why tokenholders are listed as accountable, they have the final say.
• The Head of Governance executes the co-funding mechanism, but only after a positive tokenholder vote.
• HoS Directors and the Security Council, as well as the Screening Committee are also involved as part of the checks defined in the proposal process.

So decision-making, execution, and oversight are split across different actors within the governance framework so that no single entity can decide on any co-funding allocation.

Summary

This proposal is making a commitment that the House of Stake takes responsibility for making sound funding decisions, it does not, however, decide on specific allocations itself. The allocation is subject to the checks and balances defined in the House of Stake’s Proposal Process.

Overall, it’s great to see so many thoughtful questions around the Skin-in-the-Game mechanism. It clearly shows that when there’s real skin in the game, voters engage more deeply and evaluate proposals more thoroughly. That level of scrutiny is a key ingredient for making House of Stake successful.

Definitely the right direction, thank you for your questions @yadirab.