2024/2025 Crypto Compensation Report

Compensation is one of the most common topics we’re asked about by the Dragonfly portfolio (and beyond), and for good reason: Reliable industry data in crypto is scarce.

In 2023, we set out to change that, creating what we believe is the most comprehensive dataset and analysis in the space. Our first report surfaced valuable insights and sparked sharp questions from both portfolio and non-portfolio teams. Those conversations directly shaped the design of the 2024/2025 survey you’re reading now.

This dataset includes responses from 85 crypto companies (up from 49 last year and now including companies outside the Dragonfly portfolio), collected in late 2024 and Q1 2025. For the first time, it also includes roughly 3,400 separate, non-duplicated employee and candidate datapoints. We broadened the scope of our exploration, and where relevant, compared findings to our 2023 report to highlight year-over-year trends.

While the Dragonfly portfolio will have access to more granular slices of data, our aim with this report is to make industry-wide trends clear, accessible, and useful for anyone setting, negotiating, or trying to understand compensation and hiring benchmarks, whether you’re a founder, hiring manager, candidate, recruiter, or industry observer.

Key Highlights

• Most crypto companies were in growth mode, not hypergrowth mode
• Crypto hiring was global from day one. U.S.-only hiring was virtually non-existent
• Europe became the dominant international hub
• Salary and token compensation were down across almost every level and region
• Remote continued to reign, and companies weren’t planning to change that
• Crypto was hard to break into; less than 10% of roles were entry-level
• Engineering was king. Product roles started at senior. Design valued IC over leadership
• U.S. wages became the global standard for engineering leadership

2025 Hiring Market Check

Despite bullish bluechip token prices, a favorable U.S. administration, and overall positive sentiment, crypto hiring in ’25 has been cautious. Early swings included strong January job growth, a February tariff shock, and massive reactive job cuts in March, which left net hiring negative through H1.

Preliminary compensation reviews show no major correlation shifts (expected, since comp data moves more slowly than market conditions).

Compensation Landscape

Overall, we’d call crypto compensation in 2024 and early 2025 a down market, and practices still felt relatively immature compared to traditional sectors.

Salaries and token grants fell across nearly all levels. U.S. roles still led in cash compensation, while international teams narrowed the gap with larger equity and token packages. Equity shifted unevenly, especially with non-technical, non-executive roles. U.S. saw shrinking ranges (compression), while international cases sometimes reached 2–10× U.S. levels.

By stage, the expected pattern held: Early-stage companies offered lower salaries and more equity (often 2×), while later-stage teams reversed the balance. Tokens became less common overall, but remained meaningful in Go-to-Market (GTM), Product, and senior international roles.

Entry-level roles were hit hardest, with steep salary and token cuts, partly offset by higher equity. U.S. entry hires still earned more cash, but international peers typically received 2–3× more equity and larger token awards.

Mid-levels were squeezed, showing limited growth, while seniors fared better with smaller cuts, steadier equity, and tokens becoming increasingly concentrated at the top.

The biggest step-ups came at the Senior IC and Executive levels, creating a barbell effect that was most visible in Product and Engineering.

Compensation Benchmarks

Role-by-role compensation data for Software Engineering, Crypto Engineering, Developer Relations, Product Management, Design, Marketing, and Go-to-Market (i.e., Sales/BD/Partnerships) is below.

Ranges & Benchmarking Tool

Key Takeaways

• International engineering executives out-earned U.S. peers for the first time ($530K–$780K total compensation), driven by token packages approaching ~3%.
• For Crypto Engineers, the “certainty vs. upside” tradeoff was clearer than ever. U.S. engineers led on cash and total compensation at nearly every level, while international peers led on equity and token upside at the junior and mid-levels.
• Product Management executives posted the highest salary of any role ($390K–$484K) and rivaled or exceeded Engineering in total compensation; international PM equity often ran ~2–10× U.S. levels.
• Developer Relations became the most “borderless” function, with near-identical global compensation bands and small deltas at manager/executive tiers (U.S. led equity/total compensation; international led tokens).
• Design leadership wasn’t as valued as senior designers. U.S. Senior ICs (Principal/Senior) outearned Managers and even some Executives in total compensation.
• Marketing was geographically split between cash and ownership. U.S. led salary and total compensation, while international equity ran ~3–10× U.S. levels.
• Pay gaps in GTM total compensation narrowed at entry and manager levels. Senior ICs topped managers in total comp, and international leaders won on equity.

Founder Compensation

In this report, we split company ownership into equity and tokens (versus grouping them together in last year’s report). For this reason, salary analysis is reported year-over-year, while equity and token data reflect 24/25 numbers.

Year over year, founders paid themselves more. Overall, more capital raised correlated with higher salaries and lower equity ownership (as expected).

Key Takeaways

• The average founder salary increased approximately 37% year-over-year, from $144,000 in 2023 to $197,000 in 24/25.
• Seed-stage U.S. founders held the highest equity ownership of any group (32%).
• Rare outlier: At Series A, international founders earned higher salaries ($244,000) than U.S. founders ($198,000), while U.S. founders held more tokens (13% vs. 9%) and slightly more equity (20% vs. 19%).
• Rare outlier: At Series B, international founders reported the highest equity ownership (30%), but this was based on limited data points and should be interpreted with caution.

Bonus & Variable-Pay Practices

Bonuses remained a selective but meaningful part of compensation.

Usage declined with scale: smaller and earlier-stage teams were most likely to experiment, mid-sized firms adopted selectively, and later-stage and infra-focused companies tapered them off in favor of long-term incentives.

Key Takeaways

• Bonuses peaked at the smallest company sizes (1–5 employees) and early stages (Seed/Series A), especially among companies with $5M–$19.9M in funding.
• CeFi had the highest adoption at 71%; DeFi sat at 50%, heavily U.S.-driven and with a stronger tilt toward individual performance; Infra / L1 / L2 adoption was much lower (15–30%) and typically mixed.
• The U.S. was more bonus-friendly, particularly for mid-sized teams.

Token Compensation Analysis

Year over year, the way teams sized token grants shifted.

Many increasingly separated tokens from equity when calculating grants. At later stages, the norm was to peg grants to a Fair Market Value calculation, most often using a time-weighted average price (TWAP), although other methods still appeared at the edges.

As it came to vesting, most teams adhered to the familiar four-year schedule with a one-year cliff, although some experimented with hybrid models that blended time-based schedules with milestone-driven unlocks.

Our research on cap-table management showed most companies offered tokens from a dedicated employee token pool. A handful of very large organizations still allocated grants against total supply, but that was increasingly the exception.