TL;DR:
- Aave received initiated coverage from Standard Chartered with a price target of $3,500 by end of 2030, a potential 50x upside.
- The bank projects that tokenized assets actively used in DeFi will grow 37 times by the end of the decade, directly benefiting the protocol’s revenue model.
- AAVE trades at $76.6 with a 6.1% gain in the last 24 hours and trading volume exceeding $226 million following the report’s release.
Standard Chartered initiated coverage on Aave, the largest decentralized lending protocol, with a price target of $3,500 for the token by end of 2030. The forecast was published in a research note signed by Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research. This hypothetical leap implies a revaluation of approximately 50 times relative to the current price of $76.6.
Kendrick described the protocol as an automated blockchain-based bank that operates without employees or discretionary decision-making. At its peak, reached in October 2025, Aave accumulated nearly $75 billion in deposits, a figure that would have placed it among the 30 largest banks in the United States by that metric.
Beyond the April Incident
The report also addresses the factors that weighed on the protocol in recent months. In April, the collapse of KelpDAO‘s rsETH bridge led to an attack in which assets worth approximately $290 million were used as collateral within Aave to borrow real assets. The situation exposed the protocol to potential losses of up to $230 million and triggered a deposit outflow that eroded its share of the onchain lending market.
“We think Aave has moved past the incident of the April hack, as assets begin to return to the platform,” Kendrick wrote. The analyst projects that both negative factors —the decline in digital asset prices and the impact of the attack— are close to dissipating.
Tokenization as Aave’s Growth Engine
The bank’s central thesis links Aave’s growth to the advance of tokenized real-world assets within the DeFi market. Standard Chartered estimates that the value of those assets actively used in decentralized applications will grow 37 times by the end of the current decade, directly driving deposits and lending activity on the protocol.
Among the additional catalysts identified by the bank is the possible relaunch of Aave‘s token buyback program and the advancement of its Horizon initiative, designed to enable lending against tokenized real-world assets in a permissioned environment that could attract traditional financial institutions.
