Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced at Consensus Hong Kong that TopNod, a non-custodial wallet, will be integrated with the Stellar network. The move is part of SDF’s broader expansion into Asia. In this region, it faces stiff competition from Solana, TON, and XRP in the payments and tokenization market.
TopNod’s wallet uses key sharding and trusted execution environment (TEE) technology to eliminate the need for a seed phrase. The platform focuses on tokenized real-world assets (RWA) and stablecoins rather than speculative tokens, but it is still a relatively young project and has limited brand recognition outside of Web3 circles.
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SDF bets on emerging markets
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto, Stellar CBO Raja Chakravorti said the Asia-Pacific region is a “key growth driver” and that SDF plans to build anchor networks in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam over the next year.
“We’ve brought employees to the region, primarily Singapore, but we’re really focused on rapid expansion,” Chakravorty said, adding that more APAC partnerships would be announced in the next two quarters, although he declined to provide details.
SDF has also partnered with Singapore-based tokenization platform MarketNode and said it is in discussions with financial institutions to tokenize money market funds in the region.
The ambition is clear, but the execution is questionable. Stellar’s on-chain RWA value has exceeded $1 billion in the past year, and DeFi TVL has tripled. However, XLM is down about 71% from its 2025 high of $0.52, underperforming both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Daily trading volume is stable, but average trading value is decreasing. This suggests that while speculative and high-value capital flows are drying up, core payments use cases persist.
2026: Distribution issues
Chakravorti acknowledged that tokenization alone is no longer a differentiator.
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“Last year was a year of proving that tokenized products can be built at scale. Next year will be focused on finding the right distribution outcomes for these assets,” he told BeInCrypto.
This is probably Stellar’s biggest challenge. Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market fund remains the network’s flagship RWA product, and US Bank recently announced a stablecoin partnership. But competing chains are moving fast, with Solana and Polygon both founding members of the same Blockchain Payments Consortium (BPC) as Stellar, and networks like Ethereum and Avalanche continue to attract institutional tokenization projects.
Privacy and compliance
Stellar’s recent X-Ray upgrade (Protocol 25) introduced native zero-knowledge encryption. Chakravorty frames this as an institutional necessity rather than a privacy maximalist play.
“Privacy factors can include sending, receiving, who owns it, but importantly these need to be auditable,” he said. “Privacy may look a little different depending on who you’re talking to.”
It remains to be seen whether this composable approach will satisfy both regulators and privacy-conscious users in Asia’s diverse regulatory landscape.
what’s next
SDF has confirmed that its annual Meridian Conference will move to Abu Dhabi in October 2026. TopNod’s integration is expected to launch across the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, and other Asian markets, but no specific timeline has been given.
For Stella, the equation is familiar. It’s a strong infrastructure, growing institutional interest, and a clear narrative. The missing piece, as Chakravorty himself admitted, is large-scale distribution.
