Solana Foundation hires Binance, Polygon veterans as it ramps up tokenized finance push
Rachel Conlan and Jamal Raees join as Solana aims to court institutions moving payments and assets onchain.
The Solana Foundation has appointed former Binance executive Rachel Conlan as its new chief strategy officer, adding a high-profile crypto industry veteran as the Solana (SOL) blockchain makes a bigger push into institutional finance and tokenized assets.
Conlan will lead strategy across institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and efforts to bring more companies onto Solana, the foundation said Thursday. She spent previously three years at Binance, most recently as global chief marketing officer, before leaving the crypto exchange in June.
The foundation also hired Jamal Raees as general manager for payments. Raees joins from Polygon Labs, the development organization behind the Polygon network (POL), and previously worked at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge (now part of Stripe) and crypto payments firm Wyre. He will focus on getting payments companies and other businesses to use Solana for moving money.
The appointments come as Solana increasingly courts traditional financial firms and positions its network as infrastructure for more than crypto trading. Stablecoin payments, tokenized funds and equities have become a bigger part of that pitch as financial institutions experiment with moving assets and settlement onto public blockchains.
Earlier this month, Solana Foundation President Lily Liu laid out what she called the “Token Supercycle,” making the case of a long-term migration of money, assets and ownership onto always-on blockchain infrastructure. The idea is that more financial activity, from payments to securities, will eventually move onto networks that operate continuously rather than within traditional market hours.
The Solana chain has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume so far this year, Allium data shows. Meanwhile, tokenized assets on the network reached $4.5 billion, according to RWA.xyz, including more than $600 million in stocks, according to data by Blockworks.
“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.”
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Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
The Solana Foundation's recruitment of institutional finance veterans signals a deliberate pivot toward enterprise adoption and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs)—a crowded but strategically vital segment. Hiring from Binance and Polygon indicates the Foundation is borrowing playbooks from networks that have gained traction with institutional clients. This move follows 18+ months of RWA infrastructure maturation across Ethereum, Solana, and competing chains, where custody, compliance, and settlement efficiency remain primary competitive vectors.
For Solana specifically, the hire matters because throughput alone no longer differentiates. Institutions evaluating chains for payments and asset issuance now weigh regulatory clarity, developer ecosystem depth, and business development support. The Foundation's direct hiring (rather than relying solely on ecosystem teams) suggests it views institutional onboarding as a core responsibility—similar to how Polygon scaled enterprise partnerships. Success here depends on converting exploration into production deployments; the space remains flush with announcements but sparse on material transaction volume from new institutional entrants.
This also reflects competition tightening among L1s for enterprise wallet share. Ethereum's dominance in DeFi and NFTs doesn't guarantee RWA leadership; Solana's cost structure and speed remain genuine advantages for high-frequency settlement. But execution—not hiring alone—will determine whether these roles translate to meaningful custody relationships and tokenized asset launches.