Standard Chartered Bank is bullish on Aave, projecting it to surge to $3,500 by 2030! Forecasts that an RWA boom will drive a 50x rise!

Standard Chartered Bank (Standard Chartered) Digital Asset Research Director Geoff Kendrick has released his first research report on Aave, the leading DeFi lending protocol, setting a target price of up to $3,500 by the end of 2030—implying a potential upside of nearly 50 times. The report notes that Aave has recovered from the April hacker incident and will be greatly benefited by the explosive growth of RWA tokenized assets and the influx of institutional capital going forward.
(Background recap: Standard Chartered calls Uniswap: $UNI surging to $100 by 2030! Betting that RWA tokenization will spark a 40-fold increase)
(Additional background: Standard Chartered: “The crypto winter is over”! The three major sell-side headwinds are fully dissipating, reaffirming Bitcoin’s surge to $100k by year-end)

Aave, the leading DeFi lending protocol, has recently shown strong market resilience and received rare endorsement from traditional finance giants. According to a report by CoinDesk on the 24th, Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s Head of Digital Assets Research, has for the first time published an in-depth research report focused on Aave. The report boldly predicts that, with the DeFi market fully bouncing back and the real-world asset (RWA) tokenization trend gathering steam, the AAVE token price could skyrocket to $3,500 by the end of 2030.

Based on AAVE’s current trading price of approximately $70 to $76, this means the token has an astonishing nearly 50-fold upside potential over the coming years. Kendrick even stated outright in the report that Aave’s expected future market performance will surpass mainstream cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), making it one of the biggest potential candidates for the next bull run.

Coming through the hacker storm, firmly seated as the leader of “blockchain automated banking”

Looking back to April this year, Aave faced a severe stress test. At the time, the rsETH bridge of KelpDAO was hacked. The attacker used roughly $290 million in stolen funds to borrow real assets on the Aave platform as collateral. The incident temporarily put Aave at risk of potential bad debts totaling as much as $230 million, and triggered a brief run on deposits among community members.

However, Kendrick points out in the report that Aave has successfully weathered this crisis and the pain of losing market share. Currently, funds are rapidly flowing back to the platform, allowing it to continue maintaining absolute dominance in the on-chain lending market. He vividly compares Aave to an “automated, blockchain-based bank,” a bank that can operate efficiently without any physical staff or manual decision-making. Most notably, during the market peak in October 2025, Aave’s total deposits reached as high as $75 billion; if placed into rankings within the traditional financial system, it would be good enough to rank among the top 30 banks in the United States.

RWA tokenization as the strongest catalyst, the Horizon project draws attention

Standard Chartered is extremely bullish on Aave’s core reasons because of the future potential of tokenized assets. Kendrick estimates that by 2030, the value of tokenized assets active in DeFi applications will experience explosive growth of 37 times. Since Aave’s revenue model is highly correlated with lending activity and deposit volumes on the platform, this expansion of the total addressable market will directly translate into strong upward momentum for the AAVE token price.

In addition, the report identifies two key future catalysts for Aave. First is a possible restart of the community’s AAVE token buyback program, which would directly enhance the token’s economic value. Second is the highly anticipated “Horizon project.” The project aims to support lending operations using tokenized real-world assets (RWA) in permissioned environments. This move will substantially lower the compliance threshold for traditional financial institutions to enter DeFi, further accelerating institutional adoption.

Despite the recent overall soft performance of the cryptocurrency market, Standard Chartered believes the broader crypto asset price environment continues to improve. As capital flows back into the DeFi space, Aave—backed by strong infrastructure and liquidity—is absolutely poised to be one of the primary beneficiaries.