Solana News: The Solana Foundation has named Michael Coates, Twitter’s first-ever chief information security officer and a veteran of Mozilla and enterprise SaaS security, as its new CISO, a hire that signals the Foundation is treating security as a board priority rather than an engineering footnote.
Coates announced the move to
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Solana News: Why Coates chose Solana
The draw, according to Coates, was big. He cited Solana’s tens of billions of dollars in daily stablecoin volume and its position in processing more transactions each day than most sectors of the cryptocurrency industry combined as deciding factors.
He also highlighted the launch of tokenized SpaceX shares on Solana on the same day the asset debuted on Nasdaq, a data point that illustrates how quickly real-world financial activity is migrating to the network.
Big update for me – a new chapter and I am now CISO of @SolanaFndn.
I have always been attracted to new, rapidly evolving frontiers. Head of security at Mozilla at the height of the browser wars, Twitter’s first CISO as they burst onto the global stage, and even as a startup… pic.twitter.com/nrxtpxIKqZ
– Michael Coates (@_mwc) July 7, 2026
This activity is growing steadily. According to 99Bitcoins, revenue from Solana’s decentralized applications has reportedly grown for nine consecutive quarters, providing institutional participants and builders with an increasingly compelling case for committing infrastructure to the chain.
Coates is entering a network already operating at a significant financial and transactional scale, which is precisely why the security role carries real weight.
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A CV built for this moment
Coates’ background is exceptionally well suited to the challenge of cryptographic security. He served as head of security at Mozilla during the era of browser competition, then became Twitter’s first CISO as the platform expanded to hundreds of millions of users, building the security feature from the ground up against organized cybercrime and nation-state adversaries.
He then founded Altitude Networks, a cloud data security startup focused on SaaS document theft prevention, which was acquired by CoinList. This acquisition brought Coates directly into the crypto industry, where he gained experience in crypto infrastructure before joining Solana.
He also testified before Congress earlier this year on AI and cybersecurity, covering both the offensive risks that AI poses to digital security and the defensive potential of AI capabilities when used effectively, as he noted in his remarks. Both sides of this equation are directly related to his new role.
What he will actually do
At the Solana Foundation, Coates said his mandate spans three areas: strengthening operational security across the network, improving application security practices for OEMs, and collaborating with policymakers and standards bodies on cybersecurity regulations affecting the crypto industry. He clearly described the current threat environment: attackers remain highly motivated to steal digital assets and malicious uses of artificial intelligence are becoming a growing concern.
The governance infrastructure that Coates will help protect has become more sophisticated in recent months. Solana’s on-chain governance framework would include stakeholder replacement mechanisms that give token holders direct control over validator behavior, the type of decentralized coordination system that requires strong operational security to function as intended.
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Article SOL Just Hired Twitter’s First-Ever CISO: Is This the Security Upgrade a Network Needs? appeared first on 99Bitcoins.
