Standard Chartered thinks Aave could be one of the biggest beneficiaries as tokenized real-world assets start moving into decentralized finance. In a research note published Wednesday, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, said active tokenized assets in DeFi could drive fresh deposits into the protocol.
“Despite recent setbacks, we are bullish on the outlook for Aave, the largest DeFi lending protocol,” Kendrick wrote. He pointed to two headwinds that he believes are temporary: a broader decline in digital asset prices and the fallout from April’s $292 million KelpDAO exploit, which pulled assets off the platform.
“We think both of those negatives are poised to fade,” Kendrick said, forecasting “significant upside for digital asset token prices into year-end.” He added that Aave has moved beyond the April incident.
The bank’s thesis extends its broader bet on tokenization from decentralized trading into lending. Aave’s deposit base sat around $75 billion as of October 2025, a figure that would rank it among the 30th largest U.S. banks by deposits. Standard Chartered projects assets locked in DeFi could hit $2.7 trillion by 2030, driven largely by real-world assets and other crypto-native collateral moving onchain.
Kendrick also identified Uniswap as a potential trading hub for tokenized markets, citing its scale and track record across multiple market cycles.
