Standard Chartered just doubled down on its tokenization thesis, this time pointing to Aave as a prime beneficiary. 🏦
The bank's global head of digital assets, Geoff Kendrick, said active tokenized assets flowing into DeFi could drive significant deposits into Aave, helping it rebuild as a dominant onchain lending platform.
Key context: Aave's October 2025 deposit base hit $75B — that would've ranked alongside the 30th-largest US bank. The bank expects Aave to recover that scale as tokenized real-world assets become more widely used as collateral in DeFi.
The forecast comes after a rough stretch for Aave, including the $292M KelpDAO cybertheft that hit the protocol's lending market share. But Kendrick says both negatives are "poised to fade" with crypto prices expected to recover into year-end.
Standard Chartered also flagged Uniswap as a potential trading hub for tokenized markets. Their earlier note projected DeFi locked assets could reach $2.7 trillion by 2030. 📈
Is Aave the DeFi play to watch as tokenization accelerates?