BlockBeats News, June 24th - Geoff Kendrick, Digital Asset Research Director at Standard Chartered Bank, has initiated coverage of the decentralized lending protocol Aave. He projects that by the end of 2030, AAVE could rise to $3500, about 50 times higher than the current level of around $70. Kendrick stated that Aave has recovered from the market turmoil associated with the April exploit incident as assets have started to flow back to the platform. The protocol seems to have rebounded from the incident and is still poised to maintain its leading position in the on-chain lending market. In April, the rsETH bridge collapse by KelpDAO impacted DeFi, with the attacker using approximately $290 million in stolen tokens as Aave collateral to borrow real assets, causing Aave to face a potential loss of up to $230 million and triggering a run on the deposits.

Kendrick likened Aave to an automated, blockchain-based bank with no employees and no discretionary decision-making. He mentioned that Aave held around $75 billion in deposits at the peak in October 2025, a scale that would place it among the top 30 banks in the U.S. banking industry. Looking ahead, Kendrick expects that by the end of this decade, the value of tokenized assets actively used in DeFi applications will grow by 37 times. Due to Aave's revenue model being closely tied to lending activity and deposits, Standard Chartered anticipates that the protocol's growth will be more directly translated into an increase in the AAVE token's value.

The report also noted that Aave's token buyback program may restart, serving as a further catalyst. Aave's Horizon plan aims to support lending against tokenized RWAs in a permissioned environment or attract traditional financial institutions, thereby accelerating adoption.