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Solana Foundation just made two big hires. Rachel Conlan, former chief marketing officer at Binance, comes in as chief strategy officer — and her arrival isn’t quiet. It’s paired with a network that’s already cleared $5 trillion in stablecoin volume this year and a technical overhaul that could cut transaction times to almost nothing.
Conlan’s résumé is pretty dense. Before Binance, she logged time at OKX, CAA Sports, and Havas — a mix of crypto-native and traditional marketing muscle that’s not common at the executive level. At Solana Foundation, she’ll lead institutional partnerships and push business integration across the ecosystem. The foundation didn’t spell out every detail of her mandate, but the direction is clear: get more institutions on-chain, and fast.
Alongside Conlan, Jamal Raees steps in as general manager of payments. Raees came from Polygon Labs, which means he’s seen firsthand how a layer-one network tries to court enterprise clients and build out payment rails. His job at Solana is basically to own the stablecoin and tokenized deposit story — globally. He wants to deepen the foundation’s ties with major payment companies and sharpen the infrastructure underneath anyone building payment services on the network.
Mastercard, Western Union, and the Developer Platform
Both hires land on top of moves the foundation already made. Back in March, Solana launched its Developer Platform, and it didn’t launch quietly either. Modern Treasury signed on for payments infrastructure. Mastercard and Western Union are already using the platform’s services — two names that carry real institutional weight and signal the foundation isn’t just talking to crypto-native builders anymore.
Amazon Web Services added Solana support through its x402 feature. That one’s worth slowing down on. The x402 integration lets website owners charge AI agents in USDC for content access. It’s a narrow use case on paper, but it puts Solana infrastructure inside one of the world’s largest cloud platforms, which opens doors that cold outreach probably can’t.
Raees, per the foundation’s materials, wants to use all of that as a base. He’s focused on global markets specifically, leaning into regions where stablecoin adoption has moved fastest and where traditional banking infrastructure is either slow or absent. Solana’s transaction throughput makes it a reasonable candidate for that kind of work — the numbers back it up.
Alpenglow and the Speed Question
The Alpenglow upgrade is coming. No firm date was given, but the spec is specific: transaction finality drops from roughly 12.8 seconds to around 150 milliseconds. That’s not a small tweak. At 150 milliseconds, Solana starts feeling closer to card-network speed than blockchain speed, which matters enormously if you’re trying to convince a payments company to build on-chain instead of on legacy rails.
Speed alone won’t close that argument. But it removes one of the loudest objections.
The network’s 2026 numbers are already doing some of the persuading. Over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume processed. Real-world assets on-chain at $4.5 billion. Tokenized equity supply sitting above $620 million. Those aren’t projections — they’re reported figures for the year so far, and they give Conlan and Raees something concrete to walk into meetings with.
The stablecoin volume number in particular is striking. Stablecoin activity has grown sharply across multiple chains, but $5 trillion is a figure that puts Solana in a serious conversation about which networks are actually handling real economic activity versus just speculative trading.
Tokenized real-world assets are a different story — still early, still evolving, but the $4.5 billion sitting on Solana’s network is real traction in a space that most traditional finance institutions are watching closely. The $620 million in tokenized equity supply is smaller but arguably more significant as a signal, since equity tokenization faces steeper regulatory and operational hurdles than stablecoin issuance.
What Conlan and Raees are walking into is a foundation that’s made a lot of technical and partnership moves in a short window. Modern Treasury. Mastercard. Western Union. AWS. Alpenglow on deck. The hires are meant to turn that momentum into signed enterprise relationships and deeper payment infrastructure — not just press releases.
Whether they can do that at scale is unclear. Enterprise sales cycles are long, institutional compliance requirements are demanding, and competing networks aren’t standing still. But Solana’s 2026 stablecoin volume of $5 trillion is a hard number to argue with.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Rachel Conlan and what will she do at Solana Foundation?
Rachel Conlan is the former chief marketing officer at Binance, with prior roles at OKX, CAA Sports, and Havas. She joins Solana Foundation as chief strategy officer, focused on institutional partnerships and business integration.
What is the Alpenglow upgrade and when does it arrive?
Alpenglow is a planned Solana network upgrade that would cut transaction finality from roughly 12.8 seconds to around 150 milliseconds. No specific launch date was provided.
Why It Matters
The appointment of Rachel Conlan as chief strategy officer comes at a pivotal moment for Solana, as it seeks to enhance its competitive edge in the rapidly evolving blockchain landscape. With her extensive background in both traditional and crypto marketing, Conlan's expertise could be instrumental in elevating Solana's visibility and adoption, particularly as it prepares for significant technical upgrades that aim to improve transaction efficiency. This strategic move underscores the network's ambition to solidify its position within the burgeoning stablecoin market, which has already seen substantial volume activity this year.
