Standard Chartered Global Research initiated coverage of Uniswap, with Geoff Kendrick framing the decentralized exchange as the trading hub for tokenized real-world assets and setting a $100 UNI price target for end-2030, roughly 40x current levels.
Standard Chartered’s research division initiated coverage of Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange, with a thesis that ties its governance token to the institutional tokenization wave. The bank’s Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research, argues Uniswap is positioned to become the trading hub for tokenized real-world assets as banks move them on-chain.
The note, dated June 15, carries a price target of $100 for UNI by the end of 2030, a roughly 40-fold move from the $2.70 level where the token traded on Monday. Kendrick projects the token will outpace both Ether and Bitcoin over the period. The forecast rests on a structural call: that tokenized assets on-chain will swell to $4 trillion by the end of 2028, and that a rising share of that base will route through DeFi venues for which Uniswap is the default infrastructure.
The Tokenization-to-DeFi Pipeline
Kendrick’s case begins with the supply of tokenized instruments. Standard Chartered expects the on-chain stock of tokenized real-world assets, excluding stablecoins, to reach $2 trillion by 2028, with tokenized money-market funds and U.S. equities leading the expansion. Adding stablecoins lifts the total tokenized base to roughly $4 trillion over the same window.
The second leg is DeFi capture. Kendrick estimates that about 3.5% of tokenized assets currently sit inside DeFi protocols, and projects that share will climb to 30% by 2030. On those assumptions, total value locked in DeFi would reach $2.7 trillion by the end of the decade, a 37-fold increase from current levels. The bank frames the inflow as the next wealth-creation phase in digital assets, with DeFi protocols the primary beneficiaries.
Why Uniswap
The report singles out Uniswap on the grounds of scale, brand and longevity. Kendrick points to the exchange’s operating history across multiple market cycles and its recognition among institutions that will prioritize security and trust when settling tokenized assets on-chain.
The on-chain data tracks the argument. Uniswap’s V4 and V3 deployments together cleared more spot volume than any other decentralized venue over the past week, with Uniswap V4 alone turning over $5.35 billion in seven days, per DefiLlama. The protocol holds $2.88 billion in total value locked across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum and other chains. Ethereum accounts for about 68% of that base.
Kendrick also flags a valuation argument. He notes that if Uniswap signs enough partnerships with traditional financial firms to expand commercialization, the gap between its market value and its fee revenue could narrow, and its valuation discount to Coinbase could shrink. UNI carries a fully diluted valuation of about $2.4 billion, against a circulating market capitalization near $1.68 billion.
The Caveats in the Note
The report does not treat the path as automatic. Standard Chartered cautions that tokenization alone does not guarantee liquidity, and that issuing the same asset across multiple chains in different formats can fragment markets and create price discrepancies. That fragmentation risk is the gap between the tokenized-supply forecast and the trading-volume thesis that underpins the UNI target.
The $100 figure also remains one bank’s projection, and a far more aggressive one than most. UNI trades about 94% below its May 2021 record of $44.92 and is down roughly 23% over the past 30 days, leaving the target well above where the token has traded at any point in nearly three years.
Where It Sits in the Tokenization Arc
The initiation lands amid a run of bank research framing tokenization as a multi-trillion-dollar shift. Citi this month projected a $5.5 trillion tokenized-securities market by 2030, anchored on tokenized Treasuries, equities and a $1.9 trillion stablecoin float. Standard Chartered’s own digital assets team in April called the aftermath of the Kelp exploit DeFi’s “antifragile moment,” arguing structural fixes left the sector stronger.
Uniswap is already appearing in institutional plumbing. Fidelity’s dollar stablecoin deployed liquidity into Uniswap and Curve pools this month, an early instance of the TradFi-to-DEX routing Kendrick’s thesis describes. The report is a gated institutional note; Standard Chartered has not published a public version.
