Avalanche Foundation appointed Marta Szluinska as Chief Operating Officer, adding an operations executive as the network pushes deeper into institutional adoption and real world blockchain use cases.

The foundation said Szluinska will focus on operational delivery, governance, and ecosystem growth. The appointment comes as Avalanche moves beyond its early scaling narrative and works to support more mature applications across finance, enterprise, and onchain infrastructure.

Avalanche Foundation Chief Investment Officer Matias Antonio said the network is entering a phase where institutional adoption and ecosystem growth require serious operating discipline. He said Szluinska has built governance and execution infrastructure across a full protocol lifecycle, from inception to mainnet.

Szluinska previously worked on Midnight, a privacy focused blockchain protocol, overseeing operational delivery through mainnet launch and token distribution. She has also worked across startups, national innovation centers, and large enterprises in areas including intelligent transport, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure.

Her background matters because foundation operations are becoming more important across major blockchain ecosystems. Networks now need more than technical claims around speed, fees, and throughput. They need governance, grants, developer programs, institutional coordination, and reliable execution.

Avalanche has long positioned itself around high throughput, fast finality, and customizable blockchain infrastructure. The next phase is less about proving the chain works and more about bringing durable activity onto it.

Szluinska framed the opportunity around making Avalanche economic infrastructure for real business activity at scale. That language points directly at the foundation’s institutional ambitions as traditional finance firms test blockchain rails for tokenized assets, payments, and settlement.