The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced during Consensus Hong Kong that TopNod, a non-custodial wallet, will integrate with the Stellar network. This step is part of SDF's broader expansion in Asia – a region where it faces significant competition from Solana, TON, and XRP in the areas of payments and tokenization.
The TopNod wallet utilizes key sharding and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology, eliminating the need for a recovery phrase. The platform primarily focuses on tokenized Real-World Assets (RWAs) and stablecoins, rather than speculative tokens. However, the project is still relatively young with limited brand recognition outside the Web3 world.
SDF is betting on emerging markets
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto, Raja Chakravorti, CBO of Stellar, called Asia-Pacific “an important growth engine” and stated that SDF plans to build anchor networks in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam in the coming year.
“We first hired employees in the region with a focus on Singapore, but we really started to target rapid expansion,” said Chakravorti. He added that more collaborations with financial institutions in APAC will be announced in the coming two quarters – although he did not provide any details.
SDF has also partnered with MarketNode, a tokenization platform from Singapore, and reported that it is in discussions with financial institutions to tokenize money market funds in the region.
The ambition is clear, but execution remains the big question. The on-chain RWA value on Stellar surpassed $1 billion last year, and the DeFi TVL on the network tripled. Nevertheless, XLM has declined about 71% from its 2025 high of $0.52, performing worse than both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Daily transaction levels remain stable, but the average transaction value has decreased. This indicates that the main use case – payments – remains intact, while speculative and large-value transactions have decreased.
2026: the distribution problem
Chakravorti acknowledged that mere tokenization is no longer a distinguishing factor these days.
“Last year was really about demonstrating that tokenized products can be built at scale. This coming year will mainly be about finding the right distribution opportunities for these assets,” he told BeInCrypto.
This is likely the biggest challenge for Stellar. Franklin Templeton's tokenized money market fund is still the flagship RWA product of the network, and US Bank recently announced a stablecoin partnership. But competing chains are moving quickly – Solana and Polygon are alongside Stellar founders of the same Blockchain Payments Consortium (BPC), and networks like Ethereum and Avalanche continue to attract institutional tokenization projects.
Privacy vs compliance
The recent X-Ray upgrade (Protocol 25) of Stellar has brought native zero-knowledge cryptography. According to Chakravorti, this is particularly needed for institutions and less focused on maximum privacy.
“Privacy elements can be about sending, receiving, who the holder is – but the most important thing is that they must be auditable,” he said. “Privacy can look different depending on who you’re talking to.”
Whether this configurable approach will be sufficient for both regulators and privacy-conscious users in the diverse Asian regulatory landscape remains to be seen.
What now
SDF confirmed that the annual Meridian conference will move to Abu Dhabi in October 2026. The integration of TopNod is expected to go live in the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, and other Asian markets, although no specific timeline has been given.
For Stellar, the formula is recognizable: strong infrastructure, growing institutional interest, and a clear narrative. The missing piece – as Chakravorti himself admitted – is distribution at scale.
