Follow the manager's own money
Performance fees create asymmetric incentives: the manager shares the upside but not the downside — unless their own capital is in the vault. Manager stake as a percentage of vault equity converts that abstraction into a number.
We treat a high stake as a genuine positive, but we cap its influence. A well-aligned manager running a reckless strategy is still a reckless strategy.
Beware the 100% stake
A vault where the manager owns essentially everything is often a personal account, not a product. Alignment is perfect and copyability is poor — capacity, behaviour and continuity are all unknown.