Stellar Partners With TopNod to Boost Wallet Adoption Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America

• Stellar has struck a new partnership with TopNod to increase wallet access in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
• The two partners will target real-world assets and stablecoins, with TopNod’s key sharding and TEE eliminating the need for seed phrases.

The Stellar Development Foundation has announced a new partnership with TopNod, a provider of non-custodial wallet solutions, to boost adoption across emerging markets. The integration, which was announced at the Consensus conference in Hong Kong, will connect TopNod’s digital wallet to the Stellar network to serve Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

TopNod wallet solution eliminates the use of traditional seed phrases by sharding keys and TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technology. The platform prioritizes tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and stablecoins rather than speculative assets. TopNod is relatively new, but its tech-driven model is garnering interest due to its ability to facilitate secure onboarding in low-financial-inclusion regions.

According to Stellar CBO Raja Chakravorti, the Foundation’s focus for 2026 goes beyond just about building tokenized products and focuses on enabling their real-world use. He added that anchor networks will be expanded across Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines to improve asset accessibility and liquidity. In markets like Singapore, the Foundation has struck a partnership with MarketNode to explore tokenized money market funds in the region.

Stellar’s 2026 Strategy Prioritizes Distribution and Privacy

Despite recent growth, the XLM price has seen a 50% decline in the last year. On-chain data shows that while payment use cases have remained consistent, average transaction values have declined. Still, Stellar’s network value in RWAs surpassed $1 billion last year, and DeFi TVL on the chain has tripled, suggesting consistent infrastructure usage beyond market volatility.

Chakravorti confirmed that over the next two quarters, SDF will announce additional financial institution partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region. These steps align with the foundation’s broader plan to increase the utility of tokenized assets beyond proof-of-concept deployments. TopNod’s integration is one part of this roadmap and is expected to go live across Singapore, the Philippines, and Japan in the coming months.

SDF is also complying with the implementation of Protocol 25, the “X-Ray upgrade.” The update introduces zero-knowledge cryptographic privacy options tailored to institutional standards. Chakravorti noted that privacy configurations will differ by market but must remain auditable for regulators. He explained, “Privacy can include sender, receiver, or holder visibility, but institutions require transparency controls.”

As part of its 2026 strategy, SDF is aiming to onboard at least 15 enterprise partners, with five of them expected to launch live finance products. 

At press time, the Stellar (XLM) price had soared by 4.4% to trade at $0.16. Its market capitalization hit $5.24 billion, while the trading volume fell by 9.72% to $111.21 million.