Your voting rewards are determined by the following factors:
- The total number of ICP utility tokens in voting neurons. 1 ICP = the power of 1 vote.
- The dissolve delay of your neuron. 6 months grants a 1.06x voting power bonus, and 8 years grants 2x. All other durations scale linearly between.
- The age of your neuron, which is the amount of time you have not started dissolving it. 4 years grants a 1.25x bonus, multiplicative with any other bonuses. All other durations between 0 seconds and 4 years scale linearly between.
In other words, the more you vote, the more ICP utility tokens you stake, and the longer you decide to lock up your rewards, the more rewards and voting power you will receive.
As you vote on proposals—either directly or by following the votes of other neurons—the maturity associated with your neuron increases, which then increases the rewards you earn for participating in governance. After first creating your neuron, it may take 1–2 days to see maturity increase.
If you wish to liquidate rewards you earn from the neuron, you can “spawn” maturity into a reward neuron, which mints the parent neuron’s maturity and moves it into the stake of a new neuron. You can spawn a new neuron when the maturity for a locked stake reaches a minimum threshold of one ICP.
Each day, the NNS calculates a fixed neurons reward according to a schedule, which it then divides among all eligible neurons according to their relative claims. This rewards participants by allocating to every voting neuron a portion of the total reward, based both on its voting power at the time proposals were made, and the number of proposals it voted on. This also increases a neuron’s maturity. For neurons that have participated in all votes, voting power and therefore their relative claim derives proportionally from the number of ICP tokens locked inside and the dissolve delay remaining before the locked ICP tokens will be released.