Solana Foundation brings in ex-Binance and Polygon executives to drive payments push

Solana Foundation has hired Rachel Conlan, Binance’s former chief marketing officer, to lead institutional strategy and ecosystem growth, while Jamal Rais, ex-Polygon Labs, will head payments. Both appointments follow a string of new partnerships aimed at expanding real-world use of the network.

Recent deals include Modern Treasury becoming the payments partner for the Solana Developer Platform, plus existing ties with Amazon Web Services for stablecoin payments and expanded work with Mastercard and Western Union.

The moves come as Solana prepares the Alpenglow upgrade to cut final transaction settlement from 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds. The chain has already processed over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume in 2026, with more than $4.5 billion in real-world assets and $620 million in tokenized equities.

Based on information from https://cryptonews.net