Based on personal experience, I have found out that a neuron will not stake nor vote when it has less than 6months to go until full saturation. The voting power is also missing for this neuron. That does not make sense to me. I understand that there is a min 6 months requirement, but during this time, why can’t I vote and earn my stake? Is this a bug? It feels off that we seem to punish the last 6months of all neurons like this. In this case, it would never make sense to stake for 6months.
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It’s by design. You cannot vote (and therefore earn rewards) with neurons that have a dissolve delay below 6 months. The reasoning behind it is to incentivise voting decisions that benefit the network long term, it prevents neuron owners from voting for changes that may harm the network, then immediately disbursing and selling their ICP.
I understand the long-term incentive. But I cannot sell anyway. It is dissolving for 6 months. Why would there be an option of 6 months if actually it is staking for 0 days and then just waiting to be unlocked. I set my first neuron to minimum time which is 6 months, but instead of staking it is now just locked. How is this beneficial to anyone?
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The option isn’t actually to stake for six months, it’s that it takes six months to dissolve whenever you decide to dissolve it. So you could for example set a dissolve delay of 6 months, then keep your neuron locked and voting for a year where it earns rewards, then you decide you want to release the original stake and you start dissolving. From this moment it will take 6 months for the dissolve delay to count down to zero, then you can release the original stake.
I don’t see how it benefits anyone for not being able to vote and stake during that last 6 months. This means that in NNS, it is not correct to say 6 months is minimum time.
Maybe I don’t want to lock up large amounts of money for more than 6 months. I would still like to participate in the governance and staking.
In any case, I think this should be transparent to all. I found it surprising when I set it for 6 months and now it’s just locked and not earning, especially considering the big inflationary % of ICP.
Perhaps documentation could still be improved upon then. For others reading this too, there’s some info on the dissolve delay setup in these articles:
https://medium.com/dfinity/getting-started-on-the-internet-computers-network-nervous-system-app-wallet-61ecf111ea11
More in depth:
https://medium.com/dfinity/understanding-the-internet-computers-network-nervous-system-neurons-and-icp-utility-tokens-730dab65cae8
And:
https://allthingsinternetcomputer.substack.com/p/how-you-can-earn-icp-through-the
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Well. The conclusion for me was to just go for it and lock for 8y…29% yield is actually hardcore, unless the whole project crashes, which has a small probability. Instead of moon and sell, I’m opting to live on the stake I receive.
I would still say that the possible neuron configuration is problematic. The minimum setting is 6months and selecting that is nonsense. You just lock up you ICP for nothing.
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Right but the thing to pay attention to is that as soon as you need that money, you will have to wait 8 years to get it back…
Also, the yield can change (is my understanding) based on what’s needed to get 90% of the token supply staked. So, you aren’t locking in 29% yield, you’re locking in your tokens for 8 years and hoping the yield stays high.
Right. Hope is indeed a big part of it 
And long-term view.
But you can look at it differently. First of all, 25% will more than double your initial investment in 4y and you can sell that if you want. Yield might drop more but regardless, it’s likely you will double the ICP stack in 8y. The FIAT denominated price will also likely increase more than inflation. The project might flop (potentially lose it all, always a possibility), but might be moderately or highly successful (quite likely), meaning 5-100x in 8y.
When you say sell, then to what currency? And why sell at all? This investment could be seen as smth that you never sell. It’s a skin in the game and UBI for taking part in IC network state, an e2e network state, blockchain singularity.
So yeah, it kind of means you cannot escape the state . Although I’m pretty sure at some point it’s possible to sell neurons at a discount. It seems very difficult/impossible to prevent this.
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Totally agree! I’m pretty excited about ICP. Just wanted to point out that it’s locked liquidity, so it’s not just a regular loan. It’s also not a given that the 25% will stick around forever 
RE
25% will exactly double your initial investment in 4y. But remember that that’s not compound interest. If you want to compound continuously, you’ll have to merge your earnings, which means you can’t sell it.