Solana Foundation names Binance and Polygon veterans for institutional and payments push

Solana Foundation appoints a strategy chief and a payments chief

The Solana Foundation said on Thursday that it has appointed Rachel Conlan as chief strategy officer and Jamal Raees as general manager of payments. The foundation is a nonprofit that supports the Solana blockchain, a shared record-keeping network used to run crypto apps and payments.

The foundation says the two roles are meant to expand institutional adoption and payments activity on the network. Institutional adoption refers to use by large companies, funds, and other professional organizations rather than individual users.

Who the two new hires are and what they will do

• Conlan will lead strategy for institutional partnerships and growth across the Solana ecosystem.
• She spent three years at Binance, a crypto exchange, most recently, and previously held senior leadership roles at OKX, CAA Sports, and Havas.
• Raees will work with payment companies, enterprises, and the wider ecosystem to expand the reach of Solana as payments infrastructure. He joins from Polygon Labs.
• The announcement did not give start dates for either role.

What Solana Foundation leaders say about the plan

Foundation president Lily Liu said the ecosystem is growing in both scale and ambition. She said the foundation sees the current period as the early stage of what it calls the 'Token Supercycle' — the foundation's term for a long-term shift of money, assets, and ownership onto internet-based infrastructure that runs all the time.

Liu also said the question is no longer whether markets move onchain, but how fast and onto whose infrastructure. 'Onchain' means activity recorded on a blockchain rather than in a private company database.

Conlan said she was drawn to Solana by the ambition of its builders and how much is already being put to use. She said the opportunity now is to reach a much wider audience, which means making the value clear, building the right institutional relationships, and helping businesses move from interest to implementation.

Stablecoin and asset figures cited by the foundation

According to the Solana Foundation, Solana has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume this year. A stablecoin is a crypto token designed to keep a steady value, usually by tracking the US dollar.

The foundation also says real-world assets on the network have passed $4.5 billion, while tokenized equity supply has crossed $620 million. Real-world assets are tokens that represent items such as bonds, funds, or property. These figures come from the foundation and are not independently verified in the source material.

Earlier Japan market and AI payments work

Earlier this year, the Solana Foundation partnered with SBI Holdings to build a Japan-based onchain financial market. The foundation also rolled out a pay-as-you-go system for AI agents with Google Cloud.

Confirmed facts, and what the announcement leaves open

Confirmed: the foundation announced both appointments on Thursday, and it described the responsibilities of each role.

Still unclear: the announcement does not say when the two executives start, how their teams are structured, or how the foundation will measure the results of the institutional and payments push.

Why the appointments matter for Solana's institutional push

The hires are the foundation's stated way of pushing Solana further into institutional and payments use. The foundation points to its stablecoin volume and real-world asset figures as signs of activity already on the network. The appointments themselves do not change how the network works.

Sources

• The Block

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