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NEAR Protocol wants a war chest. A $450 million one, to be exact — and the idea comes straight from co-founder Illia Polosukhin.
Polosukhin put forward a proposal to build what he’s calling a sovereign fund for NEAR Protocol, modeled after the kind of national wealth vehicles you’d find in Norway or Singapore, plus the endowment structures that keep major universities funded for decades. The basic logic: use investment returns to cover operations and development, so the protocol isn’t constantly chasing outside money or at the mercy of crypto market swings. It’s a pretty different way to think about blockchain sustainability, and it’s not really how most projects handle their treasury.
The initial capital earmarked for the fund sits at $450 million.
How the Fund Would Actually Work
The plan isn’t just to park cash somewhere. Per the proposal, a team of experienced professionals would manage the fund’s assets, with a focus on generating solid returns while keeping risk in check. Those returns would then flow back into NEAR — funding new projects, supporting research, and keeping the existing network running. The goal is basically to build a self-sustaining financial engine, one that doesn’t require NEAR to keep going back to external investors or depend on token sales to stay afloat.
Sovereign wealth funds and university endowments work on this same principle. Norway’s Government Pension Fund, for instance, has long been cited as a model for how to turn a finite resource into a perpetual income stream. NEAR is borrowing that playbook and applying it to a blockchain protocol, which is — let’s be honest — a pretty novel move for this space.
No specific breakdown of where the $450 million would be invested was included in the proposal. Unclear whether that detail comes later or gets worked out post-approval.
Community Vote Is the Real Hurdle
None of this happens without the community. The proposal needs to go through a vote by NEAR’s community members before anything moves forward. And that’s not a formality — the outcome of that vote will basically determine whether this financial strategy gets built at all, or stays a white paper idea.
NEAR operates under a decentralized governance model, so the community holds real power here. If they back it, the fund moves ahead. If they don’t, Polosukhin’s plan stalls. It’s that simple.
The stakes are real. NEAR has been pushing for broader adoption and trying to carve out a durable position in a competitive blockchain market. Winning that fight over the long run takes money — consistent, reliable money that doesn’t evaporate when token prices drop or sentiment shifts. A $450 million fund, if managed well, could provide exactly that kind of buffer.
And the timing matters. Crypto markets have been volatile enough that projects relying purely on token treasury reserves have found themselves in trouble before. NEAR seems to want to get ahead of that problem rather than react to it.
A Model Others Might Copy
If NEAR pulls this off, it probably won’t be the last project to try it. The idea of a blockchain protocol running its finances like a sovereign wealth fund is unusual right now, but that’s kind of the point — it’s an attempt to borrow credibility and stability from institutional finance and transplant it into crypto infrastructure.
Whether it works depends a lot on who manages the fund and how the investments perform. A poorly run endowment can erode principal fast. But the structural concept — generate returns, fund operations from those returns, protect the core asset — is proven outside of crypto. The question is whether it translates.
Polosukhin’s proposal frames the fund as central to NEAR’s long-term vision, not just a financial side project. By securing dedicated capital, NEAR wants to reduce the kind of financial uncertainty that can slow down development or force hard choices during market downturns. Developers need to get paid. Research needs to get funded. Infrastructure needs maintenance. A reliable income stream from a well-managed fund could cover all of that without NEAR having to constantly fundraise or dilute token holders.
The community vote will be closely watched — not just by NEAR supporters, but by other blockchain teams that are probably wondering if this model is worth replicating.
The $450 million figure is the starting point. What happens to it next is up to the vote.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who proposed the NEAR Protocol sovereign fund?
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, put forward the proposal for a $450 million sovereign fund to support the protocol’s long-term sustainability.
What models inspired the fund’s structure?
The fund is modeled after sovereign wealth funds in Norway and Singapore, as well as university endowments, with the aim of using investment returns to cover operations and development costs.
