<span class=”acf-media-credit”><span class=”acf-credit”><span class=”acf-credit”><a href=”theblock.co” target=”_blank”>The Block</a></span></span><span class=”acf-credit”> | <span class=”acf-credit”><a href=”irischo.com” target=”_blank”>Illustration by Iris Cho for The Block</a></span></span></span>
On Thursday, the Solana Foundation revealed the recruitment of Rachel Conlan as its chief strategy officer alongside Jamal Raees as the general manager of payments, as the non-profit aims to boost institutional adoption and payment operations throughout the network.
“The Solana ecosystem is growing in both scale and ambition,” remarked Solana Foundation President Lily Liu. “We’re in the early innings of the Token Supercycle, where all assets and financial activity become native to the internet, enabling markets that are faster, more accessible and always on. Exceptional leaders choose Solana because they want to be close to what’s being built.”
Conlan will spearhead strategic initiatives focusing on institutional alliances and expansion of the ecosystem. Her background includes a three-year tenure at Binance, as well as previous senior leadership positions at OKX, CAA Sports, and Havas.
Raees will collaborate with payment firms, corporations, and the wider community to scale the network’s adoption and footprint as a worldwide payments framework. He transitions to this role from Polygon Labs.
The foundation applies the phrase “Token Supercycle” to characterize the gradual shift of currency, property rights, and assets onto continuous web infrastructure. Liu noted, “The question is no longer whether markets move onchain, it’s how fast, and onto whose infrastructure.”
According to the Solana Foundation, Solana (SOL) has handled upwards of $5 trillion in stablecoin transactions over the course of the year. Real-world assets hosted on the network have climbed past $4.5 billion, while the supply of tokenized equities has exceeded $620 million.
“What brought me to Solana was the ambition of the builders and how much is already being put to use,” Conlan stated. “The opportunity now is to bring that to a much wider audience. That means making the value clear, building the right institutional relationships and helping businesses move from interest to implementation.”
Earlier this year, the Solana Foundation collaborated with SBI Holdings to establish a Japan-based onchain financial marketplace. Furthermore, the organization introduced a novel pay-as-you-go architecture for artificial intelligence agents in conjunction with Google Cloud.
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/ecosystems/2026-09-24-solana-foundation-taps-binance-polygon-vets-to-drive-institutional-adoption-and-payments-416254.
