The Solana Foundation has appointed Rachel Conlan as chief strategy officer and Jamal Raees as general manager of payments, installing two senior executives to pursue institutional partnerships and commercial payment use as activity involving stablecoins and tokenized assets grows on the network.
The hires arrive as the foundation seeks to convert blockchain activity into longer-term relationships with financial firms, payment providers and large enterprises. According to the foundation’s onchain metrics, Solana has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume so far this year, while the value of real-world assets represented on the network has exceeded $4.5 billion. Tokenized equity supply has also risen above $620 million.
Conlan will lead strategy surrounding institutional partnerships and ecosystem growth. Raees will oversee work with payment companies, enterprises and other ecosystem participants, with a mandate to expand the network’s payments footprint.
The two roles place Solana’s next phase of outreach in the hands of executives with experience across centralized crypto platforms, business development and blockchain infrastructure. Their appointments suggest the foundation is placing greater emphasis on the commercial layer around the chain: the partnerships, distribution channels and product integrations required for large organizations to use public blockchain infrastructure regularly.
Conlan takes on institutional strategy
Conlan joins the Solana Foundation after three years at Binance. Before that, she held senior positions at OKX, CAA Sports and communications group Havas, bringing a background that spans crypto exchanges, entertainment representation and brand strategy.
At the foundation, her portfolio will center on relationships with institutions and the growth of the Solana ecosystem. That assignment puts her at the intersection of financial-market experimentation and corporate adoption, where blockchain networks must address practical concerns around liquidity, compliance, integration and customer access rather than simply attract developer interest.
Institutional activity on public chains increasingly involves stablecoins and tokenized versions of traditional assets. Stablecoins can move value around the clock, while tokenization represents assets such as funds, equities or other financial instruments as blockchain-based tokens. The foundation’s reported figures show that Solana is trying to establish itself as a venue for both forms of activity.
The $4.5 billion real-world-asset figure includes assets issued or represented on Solana’s infrastructure, according to the foundation. The tokenized equity figure, meanwhile, points to a relatively newer category of onchain financial products. Such products remain subject to the legal and market-structure rules of the jurisdictions in which they are offered, even when the recordkeeping or transfer mechanism operates on a blockchain.
Raees will focus on payment companies and enterprises
Raees joins from Polygon Labs, where he worked before taking the payments role at the Solana Foundation. His mandate is focused on engaging payment companies, businesses and ecosystem partners that could use Solana for payment-related services.
Payment adoption is a more demanding test than episodic trading activity because it depends on reliability, transaction costs, settlement tools and integrations with existing business systems. Payment firms also need clear processes for handling stablecoins, converting funds where necessary and managing compliance obligations. The foundation’s decision to create a dedicated general manager role indicates that it views those operational issues as a distinct commercial opportunity rather than an extension of general ecosystem development.
Stablecoins are central to that effort. They have become the main medium for blockchain-based payments and settlement because their value is generally designed to track a national currency, most often the U.S. dollar. A network processing large stablecoin volumes does not automatically become a consumer payment system, since volumes can include trading, treasury transfers and automated transactions. Yet deep stablecoin activity can give payment products liquidity and settlement capacity that smaller ecosystems may lack.
The foundation said Solana’s stablecoin processing volume has surpassed $5 trillion this year. The figure measures volume rather than the amount of stablecoins held on the network, and it should not be interpreted as a measure of retail spending. It nevertheless provides the foundation with a large transaction base to present to companies considering blockchain settlement or programmable payment products.
Recent partnerships point to financial-market ambitions
The appointments follow several partnerships aimed at linking Solana with established corporate and financial infrastructure. Earlier this year, the Solana Foundation partnered with Japanese financial services group SBI Holdings to build an onchain financial market in Japan.
The project could give Solana a route into a major regulated financial market through a local institution with established operations. Japan has been developing rules for stablecoins and digital-asset businesses, making local partnerships particularly relevant for networks seeking to operate within the country’s financial framework.
The foundation also introduced a pay-as-you-go system for artificial intelligence agents with Google Cloud. The arrangement is designed to let AI agents pay for services through blockchain-based infrastructure, connecting Solana’s payment technology with a rapidly expanding category of software tools. AI agents are programs that can carry out defined tasks with varying degrees of autonomy, including purchasing computing resources or accessing digital services.
Neither initiative alone proves large-scale enterprise adoption, but both move beyond the narrower use cases that have historically dominated public blockchain networks. The SBI relationship targets financial-market infrastructure, while the Google Cloud initiative explores machine-driven payments. Raees’s role could help turn such early integrations into more repeatable commercial deployments.
Foundation frames expansion as a “token supercycle”
The Solana Foundation has described its long-term thesis as a “Token Supercycle,” a term it uses for the migration of money, assets and ownership records onto internet-native, always-available infrastructure.
That framing reflects the foundation’s view that blockchains can become back-end rails for a range of financial and commercial functions. The challenge will be proving that users and businesses need public-chain settlement for specific services, rather than treating tokenization as a short-lived product trend. Partnerships must produce usable products with durable demand, particularly in payments where end users generally care more about speed, cost and reliability than the technology operating underneath.
Solana’s network capacity remains part of its pitch. The blockchain recorded more than five billion non-vote transactions in August, according to figures cited by the foundation. Non-vote transactions exclude the validator messages used to help maintain consensus, offering a closer view of user and application activity. The foundation also said stablecoin supply held on Solana approached $15 billion during the period.
Conlan and Raees now face the task of translating those network statistics into institutional mandates, payment integrations and recurring business use. Their effectiveness will be measured less by headline transaction counts than by whether financial firms and payment providers choose Solana for services that remain active beyond pilot programs.
To explore Solana’s institutional outlook and ETF potential, read our analysis in this Solana ETF guide.
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