Standard Chartered: AAVE could surge to $3,500 by the end of 2030, approximately 50 times its current price.

According to Mars Finance, on June 24th, Geoff Kendrick, Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered Bank, initiated coverage of the decentralized lending protocol Aave, predicting that AAVE could reach $3,500 by the end of 2030, a roughly 50-fold increase from its current level of around $70. Kendrick stated that Aave has recovered from the market turmoil following the April cyber theft, and with assets beginning to flow back to the platform, the protocol appears to have recovered from the incident and is expected to maintain its dominant position in the on-chain lending market. In April, the collapse of KelpDAO's rsETH bridge impacted DeFi, as attackers used approximately $290 million worth of stolen tokens as collateral to lend real assets on Aave, resulting in a potential loss of up to $230 million for Aave and triggering depositor withdrawals. Kendrick likened Aave to an automated, blockchain-based bank with no employees and no discretionary decision-making. The report states that Aave held approximately $75 billion in deposits at its peak in October 2025, a figure that would place it among the top 30 banks in the US banking sector. Looking ahead, Kendrick predicts that the value of tokenized assets actively used in DeFi applications will grow 37-fold by the end of this decade. Because Aave's revenue model is highly correlated with lending and deposit activity, Standard Chartered expects the protocol's growth to directly translate into an increase in the AAVE token price. The report also notes that the potential restart of Aave's token buyback program could be a further catalyst. Aave's Horizon program, designed to support lending using tokenized RWA as collateral in permissioned environments, could help attract traditional financial institutions and accelerate adoption.