Solana Foundation Strengthens Roster with New Appointments in Institutional Growth and Payments

The Solana Foundation is bolstering its ranks with new talent, appointing Rachel Conlan as Chief Strategy Officer and Jamal Raess as General Manager of Payments.

Drawing on their experience and expertise, Conlan and Raess will help guide Solana’s growth trajectory as the network affirms its position as an institutional powerhouse, while expanding its thriving global payments network.

The appointments come as Solana’s economic activity hits breakout velocity, drawing TradFi titans like MoneyGram and Western Union into its onchain orbit.

Solana Foundation Doubles Down on Growth

With Solana gaining considerable traction across both TradFi and DeFi economies, the Solana Foundation is strengthening its lineup to help drive growth and adoption. After a three-year stint at Binance as the Global CMO of crypto’s biggest exchange, Rachel Conlan joins the Solana Foundation as Chief of Strategy. 

Conlan will help position Solana as crypto’s leading venue for onchain economic activity, focusing on institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and GTM for both businesses and users.

“What brought me to Solana was the ambition of the builders and how much is already being put to use. 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.” - Rachel Conlan, Chief Strategy Officer, Solana Foundation

Meanwhile, Jamal Raess will lead Solana’s push to become the industry’s leading payments provider. Drawing on his experience and expertise from previous roles at Polygon Labs, Bridge, and Wyre, Raess will collaborate with payment firms and enterprises to showcase Solana’s capacity as a global-scale payments platform.

“Payments are one of the clearest areas where blockchain infrastructure is moving from promise to production. Solana has the performance, reliability and developer ecosystem to support payments at global scale. Solana has moved beyond crypto into technology for finance, and I’m eager to bring Solana to enterprises and payment companies around the world." - Jamal Raees, GM Payments, Solana Foundation

The Foundation’s most recent appointments come as the network affirms its position as crypto’s leading venue for mass tokenization on truly decentralized rails.

The Token Supercycle

By the numbers, Solana has had an incredible year. Stablecoin activity on the network is enjoying strong demand, with Solana processing over $5T in stablecoin volume. Buoyed by the launch of native stablecoins from household names like Western Union ($USDPT) and SoFi ($SoFiUSD), Solana’s stablecoin supply has surged past $15B.

Agentic payments are also on the rise. According to Artemis Data, Solana now leads all chains in x402 payments, commanding over 50% of market share.

Beyond digital dollars, Solana’s flourishing RWA sector is enjoying exponential growth. The value of Solana’s total RWA market now exceeds $4.5B, led by strong demand for tokenized stock trading. 

At press time, over 929,000 wallets now hold equities onchain, with DeFi markets processing over $1.1B in weekly volume across all tokenized assets.

"The Solana ecosystem is growing in both scale and ambition. 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. Rachel brings deep experience translating complex technology into something people actually adopt, while Jamal brings years of experience building payment infrastructure and working with enterprises on the future of money. That is the work in front of us. The question is no longer whether markets move onchain — it's how fast, and onto whose infrastructure.” - Lily Liu, President, Solana Foundation.

Solana isn’t the only entity to see the inherent value of mass tokenization. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink considers the tokenization of assets to be a key megatrend that could reshape the financial services in the near future.

As a sufficiently decentralized, hyper-performant ledger, Solana is crypto’s best-suited network for global-scale tokenization. Even with crypto markets still far from the attention peaks of Q1 January, Solana is consistently witnessing new all-time highs in daily transaction activity. 

Last week, Solana processed more weekly trades than the New York Stock Exchange, highlighting the chain’s growing scale. With upcoming network upgrades like a final slot time reduction to 200ms and October’s Alpenglow update, Solana’s performance is expected to reach even greater heights before the end of the year.

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