Solana Foundation taps Binance, Polygon vets to drive institutional adoption and payments

The Solana Foundation announced Thursday the appointment of Rachel Conlan as chief strategy officer and Jamal Raees as general manager of payments, as the organization looks to expand institutional adoption and payments activity on the network.

"The Solana ecosystem is growing in both scale and ambition," said 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 lead strategy across institutional partnerships and ecosystem growth. She most recently spent three years at Binance and previously held senior leadership roles at OKX, CAA Sports, and Havas.

Raees will work with payment companies, enterprises, and the broader ecosystem to expand the adoption and reach of Solana as global payments infrastructure. He joins from Polygon Labs.

The foundation uses the term "Token Supercycle" to describe the long-term migration of money, assets, and ownership onto always-on internet infrastructure. "The question is no longer whether markets move onchain," Liu said, "it's how fast, and onto whose infrastructure."

Solana (SOL) has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume this year, according to the Solana Foundation. Real-world assets on the network have surpassed $4.5 billion, while tokenized equity supply has crossed $620 million.

"What brought me to Solana was the ambition of the builders and how much is already being put to use," said Conlan. "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 partnered with SBI Holdings to build a Japan-based onchain financial market. The foundation also rolled out a new pay-as-you-go system for AI agents with Google Cloud.