Standard Chartered Sees Aave Surging to $3,500 by 2030 on DeFi Recovery

Standard Chartered said decentralized lending protocol Aave could climb to $3,500 by 2030.

Jeff Kendrick, the bank's head of digital-asset research, wrote in a June 24 report that Aave could reach that level by the end of 2030, CoinDesk reported.

Aave was trading at about $76.75 on June 24, up roughly 6.5% from a day earlier, according to CoinMarketCap. That suggests Standard Chartered expects the token to rally nearly 50-fold over the next four years. The bank also projects Aave will outperform both Bitcoin and Ether over that period.

Standard Chartered's view is that Aave will benefit from a recovery in decentralized finance. After a major hack in April, assets have begun returning to Aave, and the protocol remains well positioned to maintain its dominance in the on-chain lending market, the bank wrote.

The bank also highlighted Aave's deposit base. Deposits on the protocol reached a record $75 billion in January 2025, according to Standard Chartered. The bank said that amount would rank Aave among the 30 largest banks in the US.

Standard Chartered identified a DeFi recovery and the tokenization of real-world assets, or RWAs, as the main growth drivers. It projects the value of tokenized assets used in DeFi applications will increase nearly 37-fold by the end of 2030.