Solana strengthens its institutional finance team
The Solana Foundation is expanding its push into institutional finance and tokenized assets with two senior hires from major crypto companies.
Former Binance executive Rachel Conlan has joined the foundation as chief strategy officer, where she will oversee strategy involving institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and efforts to bring more businesses onto the Solana network.
Conlan previously spent three years at Binance and most recently served as the exchange's global chief marketing officer. She left Binance in June. Her experience at one of the industry's largest crypto companies adds an executive with experience in global partnerships and ecosystem development as Solana seeks to expand beyond traditional crypto trading.
The foundation also appointed Jamal Raees as general manager for payments. Raees previously worked at Polygon Labs, the development organization behind Polygon, as well as stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, which is now part of Stripe, and crypto payments firm Wyre.
Payments become a bigger part of Solana's strategy
Raees will focus on expanding the use of Solana among payments companies and other businesses that need blockchain infrastructure for moving money.
The appointments arrive as stablecoin payments, tokenized funds and tokenized equities become increasingly important areas of Solana's institutional strategy. Rather than positioning the blockchain only as a venue for crypto trading, the foundation is increasingly presenting it as infrastructure for payments and financial assets that can operate on public blockchain networks.
The broader strategy reflects a growing effort across the digital-asset industry to bring traditional financial activity onto blockchain infrastructure. For institutions, tokenization can represent ownership or financial interests digitally while allowing transactions and settlement to occur through blockchain-based systems.
Solana Foundation President Lily Liu recently described this broader direction as the “Token Supercycle.” In a September 2 article, she argued that money, assets and ownership could increasingly migrate toward programmable, always-on blockchain infrastructure.
Solana's stablecoin activity continues to expand
The foundation's institutional push comes alongside significant activity involving stablecoins and tokenized assets on Solana.
According to Allium data cited in the supplied report, the Solana blockchain has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume so far in 2026. Stablecoins are digital tokens generally designed to maintain a value linked to a reference asset such as the U.S. dollar, making them useful for transferring value on blockchain networks.
The network has also seen growth in tokenized real-world assets. RWA.xyz data cited in the report puts Solana's tokenized-asset value at $4.5 billion, including tokenized stocks and other assets. RWA.xyz Solana network data
The supplied report also cites Blockworks data showing more than $600 million in tokenized stocks on Solana. Blockworks Solana tokenized-equities data
Together, these figures highlight the two areas the foundation is emphasizing with its new hires: moving money through stablecoin-based payment infrastructure and bringing traditional financial assets onto public blockchains.
Rachel Conlan targets institutional adoption
Conlan's role will cover institutional relationships as well as broader ecosystem development. Her focus will include helping businesses move from exploring blockchain technology toward actually implementing it.
“The opportunity now is to bring that to a much wider audience,” Conlan said in a statement. “That means making the value clear, building the right institutional relationships and helping businesses move from interest to implementation.”
Her appointment follows several years of increasing interaction between crypto infrastructure providers and traditional financial institutions. For Solana, the focus is increasingly on demonstrating how the network can support real-world financial activity alongside its established crypto ecosystem.
Her previous position at Binance gives her experience working within a global crypto business, while Raees brings experience spanning blockchain infrastructure, stablecoins and payments.
Why the new hires matter for Solana
The appointments give the Solana Foundation dedicated leadership across two areas that are becoming central to its institutional strategy: strategic partnerships and payments.
Conlan will focus broadly on institutional relationships and ecosystem growth, while Raees will concentrate specifically on encouraging payment companies and other businesses to use Solana for moving money.
The foundation's strategy is therefore extending beyond attracting developers and crypto-native users. Stablecoin transaction activity, tokenized stocks and other real-world assets provide potential use cases that connect blockchain infrastructure with established financial markets.
For beginners, the distinction is important: tokenized assets do not necessarily mean that the underlying traditional assets themselves have been moved onto a blockchain. Instead, blockchain-based tokens can be used to represent ownership or an interest in an underlying asset, depending on how the product is structured.
Solana's latest hires signal that the foundation intends to spend more resources turning institutional interest in these applications into actual business adoption.
As Conlan put it, the goal is to help companies move “from interest to implementation,” while Raees will focus on the payments side of that transition.
