Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced at Consensus Hong Kong that TopNod, a wallet where the user has control, will connect to the Stellar network. SDF is doing this as part of its investment in Asia — a market where they compete against Solana, TON, and XRP for payments and tokenization.
TopNod wallet uses key sharing and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to avoid seed phrases. The platform focuses on tokenized real-world assets (RWA) and stablecoins, not speculative tokens. However, the project is new and few outside Web3 circles are aware of it.
SDF is focusing on growth markets
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto, Stellar CBO Raja Chakravorti stated that Asia and the Pacific region are driving much of the growth. SDF aims to expand anchor networks in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam in the coming year.
“We hired staff in the region with a focus on Singapore, but now we want to grow quickly,” said Chakravorti. He added that new collaborations with APAC's financial institutions will be announced within two quarters, but he did not provide any details.
SDF has also partnered with MarketNode, a tokenization platform from Singapore, and is speaking with banks about tokenizing money market funds in the region.
The ambition is clear, but the question is whether they will succeed. Stellar has had over 1 billion USD in on-chain RWA value in the past year, and their DeFi TVL has tripled. However, XLM has lost around 71% from its peak value in 2025 of 0.52 USD, which is worse than both Bitcoin and Ethereum. The number of daily transactions has been stable, but the average transaction values have decreased. This shows that regular payments remain, while speculative and large capital flows have diminished.
2026: The distribution problem
Chakravorti acknowledged that mere tokenization is no longer enough to stand out.
“Last year we showed that tokenized products can be built at scale. Next year, we will focus on finding the right way to distribute these assets,” he told BeInCrypto.
This may be Stellar's biggest challenge. Franklin Templeton's money market fund remains the network's flagship product with RWA, and US Bank recently announced a stablecoin collaboration. But competitors are moving quickly — Solana and Polygon are also founding the same Blockchain Payments Consortium (BPC) as Stellar, and networks like Ethereum and Avalanche continue to attract institutional tokenization projects.
Privacy compared to regulatory compliance
Stellar's latest X-Ray upgrade (Protocol 25) introduced built-in zero-knowledge cryptography. Chakravorti believes this is a requirement for institutions rather than just for those who care deeply about privacy.
“Privacy can be about sending, receiving, or knowing who the holder is — but the most important thing is that it must be auditable,” he said. “Privacy can manifest in different ways depending on who you are talking to.”
It is unclear whether this flexible approach is sufficient for both authorities and users who value privacy in Asia's changing regulations.
What happens next
SDF has confirmed that their annual Meridian conference will move to Abu Dhabi in October 2026. TopNod is expected to launch in the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, and other Asian countries, but there is still no exact timeline.
For Stellar, the recipe is familiar: strong infrastructure, growing interest from institutions, and a clear narrative. The missing piece — as Chakravorti himself stated — is broad distribution.
