Solana Foundation Bolsters Partnerships with Binance Alum and Payments Veteran

Solana Foundation has made two key hires in its drive to expand partnerships and grow its user base. Rachel Conlan, former chief marketing officer at Binance, has joined as chief strategy officer. Conlan will oversee institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and efforts to bring businesses onto the Solana network.

She brings significant experience from her time at Binance, OKX, CAA Sports, and Havas. Jamal Raees, a former executive at Polygon Labs, has also been appointed as general manager of payments. He aims to deepen engagement with major payments companies and focus on infrastructure used by teams building payment services on Solana.

The appointments follow the launch of the Solana Developer Platform in March. This includes Modern Treasury as a payments infrastructure partner, alongside early users Mastercard and Western Union. Amazon Web Services has also integrated Solana into its x402 feature, allowing website owners to charge AI agents in USDC for access to content.

The Solana network is growing rapidly, with over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume processed so far in 2026. It has also reported more than $4.5 billion in real-world assets on the network and over $620 million in tokenized equity supply.