Standard Chartered predicts a 40-fold increase in 4 years. What makes Uniswap exceptional?

陶朱，Goldman Sachs Finance

Summary: On June 15, 2026, a report was released predicting that UNI's target price by the end of 2030 will reach $100, roughly 40 times higher than the $2.70 trading price on Monday. The bank's Global Digital Asset Research Director, Geoff Kendrick, positions Uniswap as a core trading hub in the wave of real-world asset tokenization. What makes Uniswap so outstanding that Standard Chartered Bank can praise it?

1. Four-year 40-fold growth forecast

On June 15, a research report from Standard Chartered Bank suddenly ignited the crypto market.

Standard Chartered's research department was the first to analyze the world's largest decentralized exchange, Uniswap, arguing that Uniswap's governance token is closely related to the institutional tokenization wave. The bank's Global Digital Asset Research Director, Geoff Kendrick, believes that as banks transfer real-world assets onto the chain, Uniswap is expected to become the trading center for tokenized real-world assets.

According to Kendrick's annual target for UNI: reaching $6.50 by the end of 2026, $20 by the end of 2027, $40 by the end of 2028, $65 by the end of 2029, and $100 by the end of 2030. This means that by the end of 2030, UNI's price will have increased about 40 times from Monday's $2.70. Kendrick expects UNI's performance during this period to surpass Ethereum and Bitcoin. This prediction is based on a structural assumption: by 2028, the on-chain tokenized asset market will expand to $4 trillion, with an increasing number of assets traded via DeFi platforms, and Uniswap being the default infrastructure for these platforms.

Kendrick also presents a valuation argument. He points out that if Uniswap partners with enough traditional financial companies to expand its commercialization scale, the gap between its market cap and fee income could narrow, and its valuation discount relative to Coinbase might decrease. The fully diluted valuation of UNI is about $2.4 billion, with a circulating market cap close to $1.68 billion.

For details, see "Standard Chartered Sets $100 Target Price: Will UNI Become the Next Core Institutional Asset?"

2. Why is Uniswap attracting Standard Chartered Bank's attention?

Many people's impression of Uniswap may still be stuck on decentralized exchanges, but in fact, Uniswap has long grown into one of the most important financial infrastructures in the entire DeFi world.

1. Impressive Data

Since its launch in 2018, Uniswap's total trading volume has exceeded $3.7 quadrillion, with total fee income reaching $5.6 billion. Although Uniswap's trading volume is comparable to Coinbase, its market value-to-fee ratio is significantly lower than Coinbase. Kendrick states that with increased commercialization and deeper institutional cooperation, this gap is expected to narrow over time. Additionally, the protocol has locked in a total of $2.88 billion in value across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and other chains.

According to Uniswap's 2025 annual review posted on Reddit, the protocol maintained its leading position among decentralized exchanges in the crypto space last year, setting new annual trading volume records. The protocol's trading volume exceeded $1.42 trillion, with total trading volume surpassing $4 trillion, and collected over $932 million in fees.

Based on the latest data from DefiLlama, as of press time, Uniswap's on-chain locked value (TVL) is approximately $3.14 billion, with a total trading volume of $42.46 billion over the past 30 days, accounting for about 16.8% of the total DEX market. The protocol generated about $858 million in trading fees over the past year, with roughly $36.55 million as protocol revenue, and distributed incentives exceeding $155 million to liquidity providers and ecosystem participants. Currently, UNI's circulating market cap is about $2.21 billion, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of approximately $3.18 billion. The circulating supply is about 580 million UNI, with a unit price of roughly $3.55. Meanwhile, the Uniswap treasury still holds assets close to $960 million, providing ample funds for future ecosystem expansion, incentive programs, and governance development.

2. RWA Narrative Outlook

At the time of Standard Chartered's first coverage report, many large banks already regard asset tokenization as a long-term trend worth trillions of dollars.

Wall Street's strong focus on RWA stems from its potential to improve asset liquidity. In traditional finance, securities trading involves brokers, custodians, clearinghouses, and other institutions. On blockchain, issuance, matching, clearing, and settlement can be completed within seconds, supporting 24/7 trading.

Major Wall Street players have already begun action. In March 2024, BlackRock launched its first public chain tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, bringing traditional assets like U.S. Treasuries, cash, and repurchase agreements onto the blockchain; in 2023, JPMorgan completed its first blockchain-based tokenized collateral trade and is actively promoting digital deposits and Treasury tokenization through the Onyx platform; Franklin Templeton launched its on-chain money market fund, FOBXX, in 2021, and has been implementing on-chain fund shares via the BENJI platform; Citibank launched Citi Token Services in 2023, exploring tokenization solutions for cross-border payments, trade finance, and cash management...

Against this backdrop, Standard Chartered has strong confidence in RWA and predicts that by the end of 2028, the scale of on-chain tokenized assets will expand from the current approximately $340 billion to $4 trillion, nearly 12 times growth. More assets will be traded via DeFi platforms, with Uniswap being the default infrastructure for these platforms. Currently, about 3.5% of tokenized assets are in DeFi protocols, and by 2030, this proportion is expected to rise to 30%.

If trillions of dollars of government bonds, funds, bonds, and stocks are gradually tokenized in the future, Uniswap will naturally have an advantage in absorbing this incremental market. Therefore, Standard Chartered Bank is paying close attention to Uniswap.

3. Recognition from Traditional Institutions

In June, Uniswap announced that Fidelity has chosen Uniswap as the liquidity infrastructure for its stablecoin FIDD, with the FIDD liquidity pool now live on the Uniswap protocol. Fidelity's stablecoin FIDD was launched in February and is open to retail and institutional investors.

In February, Uniswap Labs announced a strategic partnership with Securitize to integrate Fidelity's tokenized U.S. Treasury fund BUIDL into the UniswapX trading system, enabling on-chain trading between BUIDL and USDC. Fidelity's Global Digital Asset Head, Robert Michenik, stated: “This collaboration with Uniswap Labs and Securitize is a significant milestone in the integration of tokenized assets with decentralized finance. The integration of BUIDL with UniswapX marks a major step forward in the interoperability of tokenized U.S. dollar yield funds and stablecoins.”

In 2024, Uniswap Wallet will partner with Robinhood. Users will be able to directly purchase crypto assets within Uniswap Wallet through their Robinhood accounts.

In addition to direct collaborations with Securitize, Fidelity, and Robinhood, traditional financial institutions like JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, and Citibank are accelerating their RWA strategies, creating potential incremental trading demand for Uniswap.

3. Recent Uniswap Developments Summary

1. UNI Price Surge

Boosted by the positive news from the Standard Chartered report, UNI's price surged to a high of $3.729. As of press time, it is at $3.581, with a 24-hour increase of nearly 20%.

2. RWA Ecosystem Expansion

On June 13, Ondo Finance announced on X that Uniswap now supports tokenized stocks and ETF products issued by Ondo, marking real-world assets (RWA) officially landing on one of the most widely used on-chain financial platforms.

On April 14, Coinbase opened decentralized exchange trading access for UK customers, allowing users to access Uniswap and Aerodrome on the Coinbase app to trade Base native assets, with plans to expand to networks like Solana.

3. Developer Ecosystem Enhancement

On April 16, Uniswap's developer platform officially launched. The platform offers a new documentation website, AI toolkit, API Playground, and technical guides. Additionally, the Uniswap API added liquidity provider (LP) endpoints, enabling developers to create, adjust positions, and withdraw fees directly via API.
The API currently supports 10 million assets across 18 chains, with routing speeds of about 200 milliseconds and a success rate over 97%. Future plans include launching dashboard analytics to monitor API performance and providing on-chain operation workflows supporting cross-chain token swaps and bridging. The API is free to use.