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Stellar Development Fund (SDF) announced at the Consensus Hong Kong conference that Topnode, a non-custodial wallet, will integrate with the Stellar Network. The move comes as part of SDF’s broader push into Asia – a region where it faces strong competition from Solana, TON and XRP in the payment and tokenization markets.
Topnode wallet uses key partitioning technology and the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to eliminate the need for passphrases. The platform focuses on tokenized real assets (RWA) and stablecoins rather than speculative tokens, although it remains a relatively new project with limited popularity outside web3 circles.
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SDF bets on emerging markets
In an exclusive interview with BeanCrypto, Stellar Chief Commercial Officer Raja Chakraborty said that the Asia-Pacific region is a “critical growth engine” and added that SDF plans to build Anker networks in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam over the next year.
“We brought the staff for the region with a focus first on Singapore, but really we were focused on expanding quickly,” said Chakraborty, noting that other financial institution partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region will be announced in the next two quarters – although he declined to share specific details.
SDF also did In partnership with Marketnodea Singapore-based tokenization platform, said it is in discussions with financial institutions about tokenizing money market funds in the region.
The ambitions are clear, but the implementation remains the question. The value of real tokenized assets on the network exceeded $1.0 billion in the past year, and the value of DeFi TVL has tripled. However, XLM has fallen about 71% from its 2025 high of $0.52, underperforming Bitcoin and Ethereum. Daily transaction volumes are also stabilizing, but the average transaction value is declining, indicating that basic payment use cases persist while speculative and high-value capital flows dry up.
2026: The problem of distribution
Chakraborty admitted that the token alone is no longer a differentiator.
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Chakraborty told PinCrypto that last year was really focused on showing that it is possible to build tokenized products at scale, while next year will be focused on finding suitable distribution results for these assets.
This is arguably the Steeler’s biggest challenge. Again Franklin Templeton Tokenized Money Market Fund The main producer of real assets on the network, such as The US Bank recently announced About a stablecoin partnership. But competing chains are moving fast – Solana and Polygon are both founding members of the Blockchain Payments Consortium (BPC) alongside Stellar, and networks like Ethereum and Avalanche continue to attract institutional token projects.
Privacy versus compliance
Stellar’s recent X-Ray (Protocol 25) update introduced native zero-knowledge encryption. Chakravorty presented the move as an institutional necessity rather than an attempt to achieve maximum privacy.
Privacy elements can include sending, receiving and who the carrier is — but more importantly, they must be auditable, Chakravorty said. Privacy can look a little different depending on who you’re talking to.
It remains to be seen whether this configurable approach will satisfy privacy-conscious regulators and users in Asia’s diverse regulatory landscape.
What is the next step?
Stellar Development Corporation has confirmed the relocation of its annual Meridian conference to Abu Dhabi in October 2026. The Topnode integration is expected to go live in the Philippines, Singapore, Japan and other Asian markets, although no timeline has been set.
Stellar followed the same usual formula: strong infrastructure, growing institutional interest, and a clear narrative. Chakravorty himself recognized that the missing ingredient was widespread distribution.
