Solana Foundation hires ex-Binance CMO and payments exec as new partnerships expand
Solana Foundation appointed Rachel Conlan, formerly Binance’s chief marketing officer, as chief strategy officer, and Jamal Raees, formerly of Polygon Labs, as general manager of payments. Conlan will oversee institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and business adoption on Solana. Raees will focus on relationships with major payments firms and on infrastructure for payment services, with an emphasis on stablecoins and tokenized deposits in global markets. The hires follow several partnership announcements, including Modern Treasury joining as a payments infrastructure partner in the new Solana Developer Platform. Solana has also expanded ties with Amazon Web Services, Mastercard, and Western Union. The network is preparing the Alpenglow upgrade, aiming to cut finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds. Solana says it has processed over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume, with more than $4.5 billion in real-world assets and over $620 million in tokenized equity supply.
