Standard Chartered Sees DeFi Hitting $2.7 Trillion by 2030 on Tokenized Asset Wave

A new research report from Standard Chartered has mapped out a path where decentralized finance could absorb a meaningful slice of the coming multitrillion-dollar wave of tokenized real-world assets. The June 2026 note, led by the bank’s Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoffrey Kendrick, sets a striking set of projections for the sector through the end of the decade .

The core projection: a 37x expansion in DeFi

The headline figure from the report is a projected $2.7 trillion in DeFi total value locked by the end of 2030, representing roughly a 37-fold increase from the levels observed at the time of publication . The forecast is not rooted in a speculative crypto bull run but in a structural thesis: the tokenization of traditional financial instruments will create an enormous pool of on-chain capital, and a significant portion of it will be put to work inside DeFi protocols .

Kendrick’s team identifies the primary driver as the tokenization of real-world assets, including bonds, funds, and money-market products . The report anticipates that by the close of the decade, 30% of the total tokenized asset universe will be actively deployed within DeFi lending, trading, and liquidity platforms — up from approximately 3.5% at the time of the forecast . This implies roughly $810 billion of the projected on-chain tokenized base flowing directly into DeFi .

Uniswap in the spotlight with a $100 target

Within that broad DeFi thesis, Uniswap receives particularly focused attention. Standard Chartered initiated formal coverage on the protocol and its UNI governance token, setting a $100 price target by the end of 2030. That target implies an approximate 40-fold increase from the price levels at the time the report was published .

The rationale ties directly to the bank’s wider tokenization view. If 30% of tokenized assets end up inside DeFi, a dominant decentralized exchange capable of efficiently pairing correlated assets — tokenized bonds, fund shares, and money-market instruments — stands to capture a significant share of volume. The report emphasizes what it describes as the unique capital efficiency of decentralized liquidity pools, a structural advantage that Kendrick’s team believes traditional finance will struggle to replicate .

The forecast chain: from a $4 trillion on-chain supply to DeFi demand

The June 2026 projections extend an earlier forecast the same team published in May. That May note projected that tokenized assets on public blockchains would reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028, evenly split between $2 trillion in stablecoins and $2 trillion in tokenized real-world assets such as bonds and funds .

The newer report adds a demand-side layer to that supply prediction. The $4 trillion on-chain base creates a large addressable market; the 30% DeFi participation rate turns that into a more concrete adoption pathway. In short, the earlier paper described how much capital could come on-chain; the June note models how much of it might end up earning yield, providing liquidity, or backing loans inside DeFi .

The friction beneath the forecast

While Standard Chartered’s macroeconomic direction has drawn attention, other participants in the broader industry discussion have flagged friction points that could slow or reshape the path toward a $2.7 trillion DeFi TVL.

Cross-chain fragmentation remains a persistent efficiency drag. Research from the tokenization analytics platform RWA.io indicates that identical tokenized assets can show price discrepancies of 1–3% across different blockchains, and the cost of moving capital between chains can reach 2–5% per transaction due to fees and slippage. Based on a $36 billion base, this drag was estimated at $600 million to $1.3 billion annually in lost value .

Liquidity concentration challenges a core narrative around DeFi. A recent working paper from the Bank for International Settlements found that liquidity provision on the largest decentralized exchange is, in practice, dominated by a relatively small group of sophisticated participants — behaving much like traditional market makers — rather than a broad, diffuse set of retail liquidity providers . The OECD has flagged similar concerns, noting that concentrated liquidity in DEXs could affect market functioning, price discovery, and raise the potential for anti-competitive behavior .

Bridge security introduces a separate layer of risk. More than $2 billion has been lost to bridge exploits since 2021, and annual execution and bridging losses have been estimated above $1.3 billion, creating a genuine friction point for any vision that relies on capital flowing freely across multiple chains .

Regulatory and systemic vulnerabilities add further complexity. The Financial Stability Board has observed that DeFi, by replicating traditional financial functions, inherits and can amplify familiar vulnerabilities such as liquidity mismatches, leverage, and operational fragilities, with the added risk that smart-contract-based automatic liquidations may create fire-sale dynamics not present to the same degree in traditional markets .

These caveats do not invalidate the direction Standard Chartered has set out, but they underscore a practical reality: a 37-fold expansion in DeFi TVL is not an organic inevitability. It depends on solving cross-chain interoperability, liquidity aggregation, and the operational maturity of the protocols that would have to custody and deploy institutional-scale tokenized assets.