Bitwise's first US spot NEAR ETF keeps two-thirds of the network's 5% staking reward for holders

Bitwise took the 5% from annualized on-chain data as of Sept. 25 ^[3][4]. It is the rate the network pays stakers before the fund takes anything out. According to Bankless, roughly 67% of the NEAR that staking generates stays in the fund and the other 33% covers staking-related expenses ^[14]. Two-thirds of 5% is about 3.35% ^[18]. Bankless lists the 0.75% management fee as a separate charge ^[2]. If the fee comes out on top, the NEAR behind each share grows by about 2.6% a year ^[10]. It grows a little less whenever tokens sit unstaked to meet redemptions ^[13].

NEAR's network inflation was recently cut to 2.5% ^[15]. A fund adding about 2.6% more tokens a year keeps pace with that new supply, roughly a tenth of a point ahead ^[16]. The margin widens in two cases. If the fee sits inside the 33% expense share, holders net closer to 3.35% ^[18]. If the network reward rate rises above its Sept. 25 reading, the fund's two-thirds rises with it ^[4][14]. On the terms published so far, I think the staking inside NRR mostly protects holders against dilution and leaves little yield over. The counter-case is that NRR's buyers were never going to run a validator. NEAR Protocol said the fund gives institutions "straightforward access" to the network ^[17]. For those buyers the alternative is holding NEAR unstaked and taking the full 2.5% dilution, and against that, staying level is a real gain ^[15].

So the rest of the return has to come from price, and Bitwise's price case runs through AI agents. Its $155.8 base case for 2030 works out to a market value near $200 billion at today's supply of about 1.29 billion tokens, before any new issuance ^[22]. The case assumes about 2% of an estimated 16.4 billion AI agents run on NEAR by 2030, each doing 1,000 tasks a year at roughly $5 per transaction ^[25]. Multiply that out and you get 328 million agents running 328 billion transactions, or about $1.64 trillion a year at $5 each ^[20]. NEAR Intents, the network's transaction protocol, has cleared more than $32 billion in cumulative volume, up from under $1 billion a year earlier ^[8]. The base case needs yearly activity about 51 times Intents' lifetime total ^[21]. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said a coming agentic economy "could unlock an enormous new frontier for the global economy" ^[9].