Standard Chartered initiated coverage on Aave (CRYPTO: AAVE) Tuesday with a 50x price target of $3,500 by end of 2030, projecting it will outperform both Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH).

Why Standard Chartered Sees Aave’s Crash As A Bottom, Not A Breakdown

Analyst Geoffrey Kendrick framed a $292 million exploit in April, which saw stolen funds deposited as collateral on Aave, as a trough rather than ongoing damage.

He pointed to a slight uptick in both metrics since early June, alongside founder Stani Kulechov’s announcement that Aave is developing a new risk framework, as early signs of recovery. 

The protocol’s AAVE token buyback program, which had repurchased 1.3% of total supply before pausing the day after the exploit, remains a lever Standard Chartered expects to resume.

The $2.7 Trillion DeFi Bet Behind The Price Target

Kendrick’s thesis rests on Aave’s business model being linear: deposits drive loans, loans drive fee income, and fee income drives market cap. 

The bank projects total value deployed in DeFi will hit $2.7 trillion by 2030, a 37x increase, fueled by stablecoin supply expanding to $2 trillion and tokenized real-world assets climbing from 3.5% to 30% of total DeFi activity.

Aave Horizon, the protocol’s permissioned lending market for tokenized RWAs, is the critical long-term driver in Kendrick’s view, though adoption remains slow with just $163 million in active loans against a $30 billion tokenized RWA market. 

Aave V4, launched in March, addresses the bridge vulnerability that caused the KelpDAO exploit through a hub-and-spoke architecture, though 99.4% of deposits remain on the older V3 version.

The Staged Targets Through 2030

Kendrick’s price path calls for AAVE at $180 by end-2026, $600 by end-2027, $1,200 by end-2028, $2,200 by end-2029, and $3,500 by end-2030. 

Standard Chartered’s reference forecasts put ETH at $40,000 and BTC at $500,000 over the same period.

Kulechov welcomed the note on X, writing that Aave’s lending model could eventually serve the entire $400 trillion finance industry. 

AAVE’s deposits and active loans still sit roughly half their pre-exploit peaks, with the token down more than 88% from its all-time high.

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