VanEck Report Erosion of Digital Asset Financial Teams: How Executive Compensation Affects Your Shares Excessive executive compensation is one of the most consistent controversies in cryptocurrency, both on-chain and off-chain. Cryptocurrency projects often allocate an excessive portion of team tokens, and some Bitcoin miners have been found to have disproportionately high executive pay. Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies were already viewed skeptically by many investors due to their use of PIPE structures—private placements that dilute public shares. Thus, it was unsurprising that some DATs also exhibited issues with executive compensation. To be clear, we agree that strong management performance deserves strong compensation. However, it is unacceptable for compensation packages to become enormous regardless of performance. To screen for this, we evaluated the top 10 DATs by market capitalization using four key questions: What percentage of fully diluted shares does the equity compensation plan represent, and what portion of that is held by named executives? Can the compensation pool automatically increase without shareholder approval? Does the largest compensation package include performance tests, and was it presented to shareholders? Based on these criteria, we categorized each company as “Good,” “Acceptable,” or “Poor.” The assessment reveals that six of the ten companies are operating appropriately; three have sound structures but weak oversight mechanisms; Metaplanet fails on every single criterion. This assessment remains unchanged even after Metaplanet recently adjusted its executive compensation program (on August 18 and September 11).