Solana Policy Institute president Kristin Smith returns to lead Blockchain Association

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Kristin Smith will run the Blockchain Association again as interim CEO from October 17.

She remains president of the Solana Policy Institute, the association said Friday.

Mersinger departs October 16 as the 2018 founding hire returns

Smith is no stranger to the role. She was the association’s first hire when it launched in 2018 and ran it as CEO until 2025.

She left to head up the new Solana Policy Institute, or SPI, but retained her position as president of the association’s board.

She takes the place of Summer Mersinger, who leaves her post on October 16. Mersinger will stay on as an advisor through the end of the year to help with the handoff, the group said.

Smith won’t resign from the SPI post. Smith’s work at the institute doesn’t change, and the association duties are in addition, said the institute’s communications director, Emily Wilson.

A spokesman for the association confirmed the same arrangement.

Blockchain Association post on X announcing the leadership change.

Senate sank the Clarity Act 49 to 50 a week earlier

The shift happened about a week after the Senate failed to move the Clarity Act forward. The bill was the industry’s endeavor to enact a comprehensive market structure law.

Cryptopolitan reported that the vote to end debate on September 15 failed 49 to 50, 11 votes short of the 60 needed. Four Republicans voted no, and no Democrat voted yes.

Coin Center policy head Jason Somensatto called the removal of explicit criminal-liability protection for software developers under 18 U.S.C. 1960 from a last-minute rewrite “deeply disappointing.”

Eighteen state attorneys general, led by New York’s Letitia James, cautioned that the measure could undermine state fraud enforcement.

“I’m proud of how far we’ve come together, from the GENIUS Act to real regulatory clarity at the SEC and CFTC,” Mersinger said in a statement. She added that Smith “built this association from the ground up.”

Mersinger joined the group in June 2025 after serving as a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Then-President Joe Biden nominated her to a Republican seat, and she was sworn in in March 2022.

Her tenure encompassed the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin framework signed into law in July 2025 by President Trump.

The group, by its own count, held more than 300 meetings with congressional and agency staff in 2026 and conducted seven-member fly-ins to Capitol Hill.

Mersinger testified before the Senate Banking Committee, the House Financial Services Committee, and a House Ways and Means subcommittee.

“Summer took the helm of Blockchain Association at the most consequential moment in the history of crypto policy, and she met it,” Smith said.

She called the return “personal for me.”

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