Here we suggest a mechanism to allow NF participants to dynamically allocate their ICP to projects in real time. In exchange, ICP is gradually swapped for the project’s tokens over time in a stepwise manner.
Essentially, NF participants are no longer locked into specific projects—they can reallocate their ICP to other projects or withdraw support entirely as they see fit.
There are many variations to consider in how this mechanism could be implemented, but these details are left open for discussion in the comments.
Neuron’s Fund participants are not locked into any SNS project. It’s a simple toggle that they can turn on and off at any time. I don’t know exactly when the Neuron’s Fund snapshot is taken to decide who is participating in the NF, but if you toggle it off before the SNS launch proposal is executed, and leave it off for the duration of the SNS decentralization swap for that SNS, then you will not be a contributor to the Neuron’s Fund. This is a choice that every neuron owner can make already.
What I think might be less clear to new community members is that they will have no control over the neuron’s that are created if they participate in an SNS through the Neuron’s Fund with the one exception that they can configure Followees and cast votes. However, they will not be able to harvest any maturity and will not be able to start dissolving any of the SNS neurons. They cannot even increase the dissolve delay or disperse the one neuron that has zero dissolve delay and zero voting power at genesis of the SNS.
The Neuron’s Fund is a horrible option for anyone who wants full control of the neurons that they receive from SNS participation. The Neuron’s Fund is really only useful to people who have a very long term investment mindset for the SNS and want to participate in a tax free way since they are contributing maturity that they never mint themselves and that they won’t have access to in the form of another token. They also need to trust that they will have full access to those new tokens at some undefined time in the future, but this is truly undefined and not guaranteed.
The people who are participating in the Neuron’s Fund should be doing so with full knowledge of these limitations. It’s an attractive option for the biggest whales in the ICP ecosystem, but these folks know what they are doing and are intentional about their Neuron’s Fund participation. No neuron was ever configured to participate in the Neuron’s Fund by default. Hence, everyone who does participate in that way is doing so by choice. I just hope smaller investors know what they are getting into when they choose that form of participation, but for sure the total contribution of these smaller investors is very small compared to the whales.
The Neuron’s Fund was renamed over a year ago for a reason. The maturity in the Neuron’s Fund belong to the individual neuron owners who are participating, not to the community. The best way to solve the problem of SNS projects taking advantage of the Neuron’s Fund is for the NNS to have stricter criteria for adopting the proposal that launches the SNS decentralization swap and to not follow the dev neuron after the launch. However, many of these proposals are passing by large percentages and in many SNS projects there are no other neurons that are offered for following other than the dev neuron. At some point in the future, hopefully less than a year, there should be an improvement to the SNS framework in which the concept of known neurons is introduced. Perhaps things will be improved at that time.
Thanks for the clarification! I guess there are still many cases in which having it be more dynamic would save us some headaches, but I agree that your explanation addresses the main complaint on X and here. (This could even be extended to all the funds.)