Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of AAVE, projecting the token could reach $3,500 by the end of 2030. According to the bank, the recovery of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the expansion of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) could position Aave as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the next market cycle.
According to CoinDesk, Geoff Kendrick, Head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered, believes Aave has already recovered from the impact of the April incident that affected the DeFi ecosystem.
He argued that the protocol continues to hold a leading position in decentralized lending and is well positioned to benefit from renewed capital inflows into DeFi, as well as broader adoption of tokenized assets across financial applications.
Kendrick noted that a $3,500 price target implies roughly a 50-fold increase from current levels, potentially allowing AAVE to outperform both Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Tokenization could become the next growth driver
Standard Chartered expects the value of tokenized assets used across DeFi to increase approximately 37-fold by the end of the decade.Because Aave's business model is directly tied to lending and deposit activity, higher utilization across the sector is expected to boost both protocol revenue and the value of the AAVE token.
Analysts also identified the potential relaunch of AAVE's buyback program as an additional catalyst. Another important growth driver could be Horizon, Aave's initiative focused on lending against tokenized real-world assets within a regulated environment.
Aave compared with major U.S. banks
Kendrick described Aave as a fully automated bank operating on blockchain infrastructure without employees or manual decision-making.According to him, deposits on the protocol peaked at around $75 billion in October 2025. At that level, Aave would have ranked among the 30 largest U.S. banks by deposits.
Standard Chartered's outlook aligns with comments from Aave founder Stani Kulechov, who believes decentralized finance will become the primary use case for stablecoins in the years ahead.
Earlier, Kulechov said that securities-backed lending has the potential to eliminate many of the inefficiencies of the traditional financial system.
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