Standard Chartered: Aave to Benefit from Tokenized Assets in DeFi

Standard Chartered identified Aave as a potential beneficiary of tokenized assets moving into decentralized finance, forecasting increased deposits and a recovery from an April cybertheft tied to KelpDAO.

The view appears in a research note published Wednesday by Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research. Kendrick wrote that active tokenized assets on blockchains could funnel new deposits into Aave and bolster its position as the largest DeFi lending protocol.

The note highlights two factors that weighed on Aave: a broader decline in digital-asset prices and an April cybertheft linked to KelpDAO that removed about $292 million from the platform and led to withdrawals and a drop in lending market share.

Kendrick wrote, “Despite recent setbacks, we are bullish on the outlook for Aave, the largest [DeFi] lending protocol.” He added, “We think both of those negatives are poised to fade,” and forecasted “significant upside for digital asset token prices into year-end.”

Standard Chartered illustrated potential scale by projecting an October 2025 deposit base for Aave of roughly $75 billion, a figure the bank said would rank alongside the 30th-largest U.S. bank by deposits. The note expects Aave to recover part of that scale as tokenized real-world assets are used as collateral and sources of liquidity within DeFi.

The report extends the bank’s tokenization thesis from decentralized trading to lending. An earlier Standard Chartered estimate cited in the note projected assets locked in DeFi could reach $2.7 trillion by 2030, driven by tokenized real-world assets and crypto-native instruments.

Kendrick also identified Uniswap as a likely trading hub for tokenized markets, pointing to its scale, brand recognition and operating history across crypto market cycles.

Aave is a non-custodial protocol that lets users lend and borrow crypto assets onchain. In April, a security breach linked to KelpDAO removed about $292 million and prompted withdrawals that temporarily reduced the protocol’s market share.