Solana Foundation appointed Rachel Conlan, former global chief marketing officer at Binance, as chief strategy officer, and Jamal Raees, an executive from Polygon Labs, as general manager of payments. The moves signal the non-profit’s focus on institutional adoption and payments infrastructure as it competes for real-world asset settlement.
Conlan spent three years as Binance’s global CMO before joining Solana. She previously held senior roles at OKX, CAA Sports, and Havas advertising group. Raees came from Polygon Labs and earlier worked at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge and payments company Wyre.
Solana Foundation President Lily Liu framed the institutional shift in stark terms. “The question is no longer whether markets move onchain, but how fast, and onto whose infrastructure,” Liu said.
The hiring comes as Solana implements what the foundation calls the “Token Supercycle,” defined as migration of money, assets and ownership onto always-on infrastructure. The network is building out an Internet Capital Markets framework where assets are issued, traded and settled natively online.
Network Performance Metrics
Solana cut its target slot time to 250 milliseconds last week, representing a 17% speedup in block production frequency. This was the third of four planned block time reductions. A separate consensus overhaul is in testing to shorten the point at which a payment can no longer be reversed.
Real-world assets on Solana totaled $4.5 billion, with $620 million in tokenized equity supply. The network processed $5 trillion in stablecoin volume in 2026 so far.
Michael Coates joined Solana Foundation as chief information security officer earlier this year, coming from roles at Mozilla and Twitter. His appointment preceded the recent strategy and payments hires as the foundation built out its senior leadership team.
