Gaming Neurons by Accumulating Maturity

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Couldn’t I game the neuron maturity by staking a neuron with 8 year dissolve delay with a small amount of ICP (e.g. .1 ICP) and then later add ICP to that neuron only when there’s a proposal I really care about?

E.g. in 3 years there might be a proposal that really matters to me. Because I’ve been sitting with this low balance neuron accumulating maturity I can just stake additional icp in my neuron at that point and get all the bonus from having high maturity without having really been impactful historically at all.

Is this intended behavior?

If not, one solution could be to make it so that maturity is tracked on the per icp level. So, don’t track how many proposals this neuron has participated in, but rather track how many proposals the underlying locked icp has participated in.

Or what am I misunderstanding?

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The short answer is no, you can’t game the system that way because the new additions will proportionally scale down the age of your neuron. The long answer is that your hypothetical 0.1 ICP neuron may get an aging bonus, but when you “top off” the neuron by adding more ICP, the neuron recalculates its aging bonus. The new aging bonus essentially weights the average age of ICP in your neuron. So if you had 0.1 ICP with 4+ years of age but then added 100 ICP of age 0, your new neuron age would be calculated as 0.1ICP*4years/(100.1ICP) = 0.004 years for a whopping age bonus multiplier of 1.001.

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