Standard Chartered sees Aave at $3,500 by 2030 — a 50x "trust the protocol" memo 📈

Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of decentralized lending protocol Aave with a year-end 2030 price target of $3,500, implying a roughly 50-fold increase from AAVE's current price near $70. Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at the bank, said in a report on Wednesday that Aave has largely moved past the market disruption tied to April's KelpDAO cybertheft, with assets returning to the platform. At current levels, AAVE traded at $75.61, while bitcoin ($BTC) at $61,004.20 traded lower on the day.

The bank laid out a staged forecast for AAVE, projecting $180 by the end of 2026, $600 in 2027, $1,200 in 2028 and $2,200 in 2029 before reaching the $3,500 target by the end of 2030. AAVE last hit an all-time high above $661 in 2021 and rallied to nearly $400 in late 2024 after President Donald Trump's reelection. Standard Chartered said it expects AAVE to outperform both $BTC and ether ($ETH) over the period.

"We think Aave has moved past the April cybertheft incident as assets start to return to the platform," Kendrick said. He described Aave as an automated, blockchain-based bank operating without employees or discretionary decision-making, noting that at its October 2025 peak the protocol held roughly $75 billion in deposits, a level that would have placed it among the 30 largest U.S. banks.

The April collapse of KelpDAO's rsETH bridge saw attackers use roughly $290 million of stolen tokens as collateral on Aave to borrow real assets, leaving Aave facing potential losses of up to $230 million. Standard Chartered said deposits on Aave have roughly halved since the incident, falling from $44 billion to $23 billion, while active loans dropped from $18 billion to $9.5 billion. Aave's share of the broader lending market slipped to 38% of deposits from a pre-incident average of 59%, though the report pointed to a new risk framework proposed by Aave founder Stani Kulechov and a recent uptick in deposits from a June low.

Standard Chartered expects the value of tokenized assets actively used in DeFi applications to grow 37-fold by the end of the decade, to $2.7 trillion, driven by stablecoin expansion, tokenized real-world assets from traditional finance firms and rising crypto prices. Because Aave's revenue model is tied closely to lending activity and deposits, the bank expects protocol growth to translate relatively directly into AAVE token gains, with the potential restart of Aave's token buyback program cited as an additional catalyst.