Standard Chartered Prophet First Comments on DeFi Lending: AAVE Could Jump 50 Times in the Next 4 Years, Target Price $3,500

Standard Chartered Bank released a report, for the first time including the lending protocol Aave in its rating coverage, predicting that its token could soar to $3,500 by the end of 2030.

Standard Chartered (Standard Chartered) published its latest research report on Tuesday, for the first time bringing DeFi lending leader Aave into its assessment scope, and forecasting that the $AAVE token could rise to $3,500 by the end of 2030. Based on its current price of about $74, the potential upside is as high as nearly 50x.

Authored by Geoffrey Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered, the report continues the bank’s bullish streak on the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector this year.

Looking back at recent months, Standard Chartered first pointed out in April that after the KelpDAO hack, the DeFi ecosystem was “set back but not destroyed”; in May, it further estimated that the global tokenized assets market would reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028; and in June, it high-profilely backed Uniswap (UNI), the flagship decentralized exchange, saying it expects $UNI to stand above $100 by the end of 2030.

A Phoenix Rising Opportunity

Now, Aave has become the third DeFi protocol to receive formal coverage from Standard Chartered, following Uniswap. Standard Chartered emphasized that the high-energy target price is, in effect, a bet on the structural recovery of the DeFi industry, and the coming surge in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.

On April 18 this year, the liquidity re-staking protocol KelpDAO was attacked, resulting in roughly $292 million worth of rsETH being stolen from a cross-chain bridge. The hacker then deposited it into Aave as collateral to cash out. The storm immediately spread to Aave, forcing the official team to urgently freeze the rsETH-related market and triggering a massive capital flight.

According to Geoffrey Kendrick’s report, after the hack, Aave’s total deposits plummeted from $44 billion to $23 billion, and active loan volume also fell sharply from $18 billion to $9.5 billion. Aave’s market share in the overall lending market declined as well: the market shares for deposits and active loans fell to 38% and 42% respectively—far below the 59% and 64% levels averaged over the 12 months before the theft incident.

However, Standard Chartered believes the worst is already behind it.

Since the beginning of June, these two key metrics have shown a slight rebound. At the same time, Aave founder Stani Kulechov announced that the protocol is developing a brand-new risk management framework (currently pending governance vote review). The report notes that this series of moves is a strong signal that market confidence is returning.

The Underlying Logic of the Profit Model

Standard Chartered’s optimistic outlook is based on a simple structural observation: Aave’s business model is highly linear and clear.

Put simply: deposits drive lending volume; lending volume generates fee income (over the past 12 months, 90% of Aave’s fees came from net interest margins); and fee income ultimately boosts the token’s market value.

Over the past two years, Aave’s loan-to-value ratio (LTV, a metric used to measure borrowing risk) has remained broadly stable at around 40%. Of the total fees generated, about 15% is retained as protocol revenue, while the remaining 85% is paid to liquidity providers.

In addition, Geoffrey Kendrick specifically pointed out another potential positive catalyst: the AAVE token buyback program. The program was launched by Aave’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in April 2025, but was suspended the day after the KelpDAO incident on April 19. Before it was halted, the program had repurchased 205,000 AAVE tokens (about 1.3% of the total supply). Standard Chartered noted that it strongly supports restarting this buyback program.

The core foundation for Standard Chartered’s long-term bullish view lies in its estimate that by the end of 2030, the total value of assets deployed in the DeFi sector will reach an astonishing $2.7 trillion, which would be 37 times higher than current levels.

Where does this massive momentum come from? Standard Chartered highlights three key drivers: first, an expansion in stablecoin supply, which is expected to surge from the current $310 billion to $2 trillion by the end of 2028; second, tokenized real-world assets (RWA) for non-stablecoins will continue to grow; and finally, the portion of tokenized assets actually put into DeFi applications will rise sharply from the current 3.5% to 30%.

Geoffrey Kendrick believes that “Aave Horizon,” a permissioned lending market specifically built for tokenized RWAs, will be the most critical engine driving Aave’s long-term breakout.

However, adoption rates in the market are still relatively low. As of the end of May, the platform’s active loans were only $163 million, while Standard Chartered estimates that the total market cap of tokenized RWAs worldwide has already reached $30 billion.

The report also acknowledges that for traditional financial giants to adopt the Aave Horizon platform at scale, they must first overcome the complex compliance requirements faced by each institution. If the U.S. can introduce clearer regulatory frameworks (such as a potential “Digital Asset Market Clarity Act”), it could significantly accelerate this process.

Geoffrey Kendrick’s phased target prices for $AAVE are: $180 by the end of 2026; $600 by the end of 2027; $1,200 by the end of 2028; $2,200 by the end of 2029; and finally a peak of $3,500 by the end of 2030.

The report further predicts that $AAVE ’s price increase during this period will outperform both Ethereum and Bitcoin. For comparison, Standard Chartered also expects Bitcoin to rise to as high as $500k by 2030, while Ethereum could climb to $40k by 2030.

Even though the outlook looks overwhelmingly bright, Aave’s current deposits and active loan volumes are still only about half of their peak levels prior to the hack; meanwhile, the native token $AAVE is still down by more than 88% from its all-time high.

• This article is republished with permission from: BlockTempo
• Original title: “50x Surge in the Next 4 Years! Standard Chartered Predicts: $AAVE Target Price $3,500”
• Original author: Mel, BlockTempo