Neuron lockup and voting

General
1

Can anyone provide some additional insight on the following NNS details :

“the more you vote, the more rewards”. After you lock up your ICP into the ‘neuron’ you can use it to vote.

  • Do you only receive rewards if you actually vote?
  • Or do you receive rewards even if you don’t vote, as long as the ICP is “locked”?
  • If you don’t vote at all, but the ICP is locked, do you receive fewer rewards or any rewards compared to if you vote?
  • What if there are no proposals to vote on, do you not receive any rewards?
  • Will you be able to delegate your votes?
  • is the reward for locking ICP dependant on the number of proposals to vote on?
  • if there are more/less proposals, how does this affect your reward?

The ICP rewards vary depending on how long you have locked in your ICP.

  • Do the rewards unlock gradually over time or only at the end of the period you’ve chosen to lock up your ICP?

The ICP rewards or votes you get is dynamic and fluctuates.

  • Is this fluctuation in rewards/votes vary on top of the amount of time ICP is locked for?

  • What variables impact this fluctuation?

  • what is the relationship between your “votes” and your “rewards”. You seem to be using them interchangeably.

  • is the reward that you get from locking your ICP in the form of more ICP?

  • or is some other token the reward for locking and voting with your ICP?

  • Will locking and voting with ICP be available immediately after genesis or will that only be available for ICP holders later on?

5 Likes
2

There’s a whole lot of detail to come very soon re all of this.

In summary, you receive rewards for voting, proportional to the no of proposals available to vote on. You can also choose to follow others instead of voting on every proposal manually.

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3

Hi there,

There are a number of related questions in your post so I’ve “bundled” them together to provide some insights. Please note that all of the details are in our public blog posts; more detailed workings will be described with the advent of Genesis.

  • Do you only receive rewards if you actually vote?
  • Is the reward for locking ICP dependent on the number of proposals to vote on?
  • if there are more/less proposals, how does this affect your reward?
  • What is the relationship between your “votes” and your “rewards”. You seem to be using them interchangeably.
  • Is this fluctuation in rewards/votes vary on top of the amount of time ICP is locked for?
  • What variables impact this fluctuation?

The NNS tracks your neuron’s participation in votes, and rewards you with a pro-rata share of that maximum reward. So rewards are proportional to overall votes. If a Neuron does not vote, then there are no rewards.

There are other factors that affect your reward “power”. When you create a neuron, its voting power starts off by being proportional to the number of ICP tokens locked inside.

For example, all things being equal, a neuron that locks up 200 tokens will have twice the voting power, and receive twice the rewards for voting, as a neuron that locks up 100 tokens.

The longer the dissolve delay you set, the greater your neuron’s voting power and the greater the voting rewards you will receive, because this encourages you to vote with a longer-term view on driving the success of the network.

In order for your neuron to participate in voting, the current dissolve delay must be set at between six months and eight years.

The final way neurons increase their voting power and voting rewards is by growing older. The age of a neuron is the time that has elapsed since it was last placed in dissolve mode.

The NNS’s payment of voting rewards to neuron holders is inflationary.

  • Or do you receive rewards even if you don’t vote, as long as the ICP is “locked”?
  • If you don’t vote at all, but the ICP is locked, do you receive fewer rewards or any rewards compared to if you vote?

If the Neurons do not vote, they will not receive rewards.

  • Will you be able to delegate your votes?

Your neurons will be able to “follow” other neurons and as a result, your neurons will vote the way the followed neurons voted. " For example, I will probably follow Dan Boneh and Jan Camenisch for all cryptography-related proposals (yes, proposals will have Proposal Types).

  • What if there are no proposals to vote on, do you not receive any rewards?

Proposal to the NNS relate to the management of the Internet Computer’s underlying network, such as pushing upgrades and fixes to node machines, and creating subnets to scale out capacity. There are dozens of code commits per day to the Internet Computer repos, so it’s safe to say that there will be a constant stream of proposals as the development teams continue to add features to the IC, not to mention any community proposals.

  • Is the reward that you get from locking your ICP in the form of more ICP?
  • or is some other token the reward for locking and voting with your ICP?

Neurons reward come in the form of more ICP.

  • Do the rewards unlock gradually over time or only at the end of the period you’ve chosen to lock up your ICP?
  • Will locking and voting with ICP be available immediately after genesis or will that only be available for ICP holders later on?

Stay tuned for more details here.

13 Likes
4

How do you determine the amount of icp which is allocated towards rewarding voters of any given proposal ?

Is the icp allocated towards voters determined by the inflation rate?

Does the entire inflation rate go towards icp NNS voters? Or is it split among any other players in the dfinity ecosystem?

Is a portion of the icp inflation allocated towards voters?

Is the total inflation rate which is allocated towards voters split evenly among each proposal over a given period of time ?

Is there a price on submitting a proposal or is it free?

Thanks !

1 Like
5

I would definitely follow Jan Camenish. Will he vote in all possible votes or is it possible that he just votes in the important things?

1 Like
6

That really depends on Jan Camenisch himself. Also he would need to make his neuron address publicly available for others to follow it. I’m sure we will find out more very soon!

7

A little clarification requested:

  1. Can neurons still participate in governance while they are dissolving?

  2. How can we compute comparative values of time locked vs maturity? Is locking a neuron for 8 years + immediately starting the dissolve countdown, equivalent in rewards to locking a neuron for 4 years and starting the 4yr dissolve countdown after 4 years (in the first case the neuron could never age, while in the second it would age for 4 years but have smaller locking time value)?

  3. Once a neuron full dissolve period is reached, is it automatically unplugged from governance, or can it still participate in governance until the owner manually removes it?

8

Is the anticipated apy for locking ICP in the first year and participating in all votes :

10% for the minimum dissolve delay
Approximately 25% If locked for max dissolve delay and bonus

Is there any way to calculate this roi of your neuron based on current parameters?

9

Re 1. and 3. You can vote on proposals while your dissolve delay is greater than 6 months. Neurons with a dissolve delay of less than 6 months can’t vote and therefore cannot earn rewards.

Once your neuron’s dissolve delay reaches 0 you can then fully dissolve it and withdraw its ICP balance.

2 Likes
10

There is a calculator for that, it should give you a general idea of potential returns: https://www.reddit.com/r/dfinity_governance/comments/n6keqr/calculate_your_neuron_rewards_earn_icp_for/

2 Likes
11

This calculator doesn’t appear to answer the questions. It doesn’t show what happens if you initially trigger the dissolve delay countdown. It also doesn’t seem to show any maturity.

12

The maturity is factored into the rewards calculation under the hood. That’s good feedback re the dissolve delay though I’ll pass that on.

13

Does the new neuron with reward ICP that’s spawned when a parent neuron reaches maturity have any lockup period or can it be dissolved immediately?

2 Likes
14

Spawned neurons will have a very short dissolve delay set, I think it’s just 1 day.

15

Approximately how long is the cycle for a parent neuron to reach maturity?

Can more ICP be added to a locked neuron ?

16

More ICP can be added to a neuron. If you do this its maturity and age are adjusted to compensate, so the spawning yield and age bonus remain the same in absolute terms.

Not sure re the first question, I’d have to check.

1 Like
17

If the aim is to decentralise the Internet why do people with the highest ICP carry the greatest voting power. AFAIK ICP is heavily distributed towards the original backers and founders of the project; an average Joe’s vote will be meaningless. If the argument is: as time goes on the distribution becomes more even, why don’t we just get on with it and distribute ICP evenly to begin with?

What am I missing. I have yet to see a crypto project where original founders don’t have the majority of control. May as well be centralised.

18

What happens if there aren’t any proposals for a 24 hr period or for any given length of time? Do the ICP rewards allocated for that 24 hr period roll over to the next and more rewards are available for the next one?

1 Like
19

Bitcoin started centralized with satoshi running all nodes, it takes time

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20

Bitcoin is a currency/store of value not a utility token. The person with the most bitcoins don’t decide on the price of a service. ICP is very different.

Dfinity has started a company where one of the main goals is to decentralise computing policies. Yet this can only fully happen in like 8 years’ time when original backers have sold their tokens and the average Joes have bought a bunch. So as soon as they achieve their milestone the incentive to make a good product just disappears. I mean, how does Dfinity even know that this voting system even works at a fully decentralised level.

You could achieve decentralised policies where everyone has equal voting power from day one. But of course why would you want that, you want as much control as possible whilst your asset is gaining value.

You want voting power to be determined by fairness, contribution, intelligence, motivation etc. Not by how many tokens you have in your wallet. Imagine if you could only contribute to GitHub repositories if you were rich.