Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced under Consensus Hong Kong at TopNod, a non-custodial wallet, will be integrated with the Stellar blockchain. This is part of SDF's investment in Asia — a region where the company faces tough competition from Solana, TON, and XRP in the payment and tokenization markets.
TopNod's wallet uses key sharing and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology to eliminate the need for seed phrases. The platform focuses on tokenized real-world assets (RWA) and stablecoins rather than speculative tokens, although it is still a relatively young project with limited brand awareness outside the Web3 space.
SDF is betting on emerging markets
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto, Stellar CBO Raja Chakravorti described the Asia-Pacific region as 'a crucial growth engine' and stated that SDF plans to build out the anchor network in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam in the coming year.
'We hired people in the region with Singapore as the first focus, but we are really betting on growing quickly,' said Chakravorti, adding that more partnerships with financial institutions in APAC will be announced in the next two quarters — but he did not want to share details.
SDF has also partnered with MarketNode, a tokenization platform based in Singapore, and states that they are in talks with financial institutions about tokenizing money market funds in the region.
The ambitions are clear, but the execution remains to be seen. Stellar's RWA value on the blockchain surpassed 1 billion dollars in the past year, and DeFi TVL has tripled. Yet, XLM has fallen about 71% from its all-time high in 2025 of $0.52, making it weaker than both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Daily transaction volumes have remained stable, but the average transaction value has declined, indicating that the core use cases for payments continue while speculative and high-value capital flows have dried up.
2026: The distribution issue
Chakravorti admitted that tokenization alone is no longer a differentiating factor.
'Last year was really about showing that tokenized products can be built at scale. In the coming year, we will focus on finding the right distribution for these assets,' he told BeInCrypto.
This may be Stellar's biggest challenge. Franklin Templeton's tokenized money market fund is still the network's flagship for RWA, and US Bank recently announced a partnership regarding stablecoin. However, competing blockchains are moving quickly — Solana and Polygon are both core members of the same Blockchain Payments Consortium (BPC) as Stellar, and blockchains like Ethereum and Avalanche continue to attract institutional tokenization projects.
Privacy vs. Compliance
Stellar's recent X-Ray upgrade (Protocol 25) introduced built-in zero-knowledge cryptography. Chakravorti presented this as an institutional necessity rather than a measure for privacy enthusiasts.
'Privacy elements may include sending, receiving, who is the holder — but the most important thing is that this must be auditable,' he said. 'Privacy may look a bit different depending on who you are talking to.'
Whether this configurable approach satisfies both regulators and privacy-focused users in Asia's diverse regulatory landscape remains to be seen.
What happens next
SDF has confirmed that their annual Meridian conference is moving to Abu Dhabi in October 2026. The integration with TopNod is expected to be available in the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, and other Asian markets, although no specific timeline has been provided.
For Stellar, the recipe is well-known: strong infrastructure, increasing institutional interest, and a clear narrative. The missing piece — as Chakravorti himself acknowledged — is distribution at scale.
