Standard Chartered’s Kendrick Sees AAVE at $3,500 by End of 2030

Standard Chartered digital assets research head Geoff Kendrick initiated coverage of decentralized lending protocol Aave and said AAVE could rise to $3,500 by the end of 2030, up from about $70 currently.

According to ChainCatcher, Kendrick said Aave appears to have recovered from market disruption tied to an April incident and could maintain its leading position in on-chain lending as assets return to the platform.

In April, the collapse of KelpDAO’s rsETH bridge affected DeFi after an attacker used about $290 million in stolen tokens as collateral on Aave to borrow other assets, leaving Aave facing up to $230 million in potential losses and prompting depositor withdrawals, Kendrick said.

Kendrick compared Aave to an automated, blockchain-based bank with no employees and no discretionary decision-making. He said Aave held about $75 billion in deposits at its peak in October 2025, which he said would place it among the top 30 U.S. banks by deposit size.

Looking ahead, Kendrick forecast that the value of tokenized assets actively used in DeFi applications could grow 37-fold by the end of this decade. He said Standard Chartered expects Aave’s growth to translate more directly into AAVE price gains because the protocol’s revenue model is closely tied to lending activity and deposits.

The report also said Aave’s token buyback program could restart as an additional catalyst, and noted that Aave’s Horizon plan aims to support borrowing in a permissioned environment using tokenized real-world assets as collateral.