The Solana Foundation’s first CISO joins as the group expands ecosystem security programs including STRIDE and SIRN amid rising stablecoin, DeFi and tokenized-asset activity on the network.
Michael Coates has joined the Solana Foundation as its first chief information security officer, formalizing senior security leadership as the organization expands ecosystem-wide defense programs. Coates brings experience from security leadership roles at Mozilla and as Twitter’s first CISO, and later moved into crypto through Altitude Networks, which was acquired by CoinList in 2022, where he became COO and CISO. Coates said Solana’s scale helped drive his decision, citing transaction activity he said exceeds most of the cryptocurrency industry combined, daily stablecoin volumes in the tens of billions of dollars and recent tokenized-equity milestones on the network. He said his priorities include building security across operational, application and crypto-specific risk areas, working with policymakers and standards bodies on cybersecurity regulation, and applying lessons from large internet platforms to crypto’s growing institutional use. The hire comes as the Solana Foundation builds out programs launched earlier in 2026. In April, it introduced STRIDE with Asymmetric Research to assess DeFi protocols across eight security pillars, provide 24/7 monitoring for protocols with more than $10 million in total value locked and fund formal verification for protocols above $100 million TVL. It also launched SIRN, the Solana Incident Response Network, with members including Asymmetric Research, OtterSec, Neodyme, Squads and ZeroShadow, while offering free tooling through Hypernative and Range Security.