The Solana Foundation has strengthened its senior team with the appointments of former Binance executive Rachel Conlan as chief strategy officer and former Polygon Labs executive Jamal Raees as general manager of payments. The non-profit organization is building out its leadership to focus on institutional adoption and payment infrastructure.
Rachel Conlan joins the Foundation after spending three years as Binance's global chief marketing officer. Her prior experience includes senior roles at OKX, sports agency CAA Sports, and advertising group Havas. According to the Foundation, her new responsibilities encompass institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and go-to-market strategies.
Jamal Raees arrives from Polygon Labs to take on the role of general manager of payments. His background also includes prior work at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge and payments company Wyre. In his new position, Raees will collaborate with payment companies and enterprises to expand the use of Solana as payments infrastructure.
These appointments follow the earlier addition of Michael Coates, who joined the organization as chief information security officer from Mozilla and Twitter.
Network Developments and Growth Metrics
The leadership changes coincide with ongoing technical updates to the Solana network. Last week, the network implemented its third of four planned block time reductions, cutting its target slot time to 250 milliseconds—representing a nearly 17% speedup in block production. A separate consensus overhaul is also undergoing testing to further shorten the timeframe in which a payment becomes irreversible.
The Solana Foundation reported that the network has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume so far in 2026. Additionally, real-world assets on the network have surpassed $4.5 billion, and tokenized equity supply has exceeded $620 million.
The Foundation characterizes this activity as part of a "Token Supercycle," describing a broader migration of money, assets, and ownership onto always-on infrastructure to form Internet Capital Markets.
