Standard Chartered initiates Aave coverage with $3,500 target for 2030

Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Aave with a $3,500 price target for 2030, betting that the decentralized lending protocol will benefit from the expansion of tokenized assets and institutional finance onchain.

The target implies significant upside from AAVE’s current price near $76 and would see the token outperform Bitcoin and Ethereum through the end of the decade.

Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, said Aave is positioned to retain its lead in decentralized lending as more traditional financial assets move onto blockchain networks.

The bank expects the value of tokenized assets used across decentralized finance to increase 37 times by 2030.

Aave could capture a large portion of that growth because its revenue is tied to the amount of capital deposited and borrowed through its lending markets.

The protocol generated about $907 million across its markets in 2025 and another $333 million so far in 2026, according to figures cited by Standard Chartered.

Those figures represent a broad measure of interest and revenue generated across Aave’s lending activity rather than the smaller amount retained directly by the Aave DAO.

Aave governance materials previously estimated that the protocol generated more than $100 million in revenue for the DAO during 2025 and entered 2026 at an annualized rate of around $120 million.

Aave has also moved to capture a larger share of revenue generated by products using its brand.

Under the Aave Will Win framework, revenue from products including Aave App, Aave Card, Aave Pro, Aave Kit and the main Aave interface is directed to the DAO treasury.

Standard Chartered also pointed to Horizon, Aave’s institutional lending market for tokenized real world assets, as a potential growth driver.

Horizon allows qualified institutions to deposit tokenized assets as collateral and borrow stablecoins without selling their underlying positions.

The bank said a possible restart of Aave’s token buyback program could provide another catalyst for AAVE.

Aave held roughly $75 billion in deposits at its October 2025 peak, a level that Kendrick said would have placed the protocol among the 30 largest banks in the United States by deposits.

AAVE was last trading near $76, up about 5% on the day.