Standard Chartered, a leading multinational bank based in London, has launched coverage on Chainlink, setting an ambitious price target of $200 for LINK by the end of 2030. The bank expects this forecast to significantly outperform both Bitcoin and Ethereum over the same period. LINK was trading near $8.25 on Monday, reflecting a projected 25-fold increase if the target is met.
Chainlink targets and market insights
Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, provided a series of price milestones for LINK in a research note. Kendrick’s roadmap projects LINK to reach $13 by the close of this year, and then hit interim targets of $41, $82, and $133, before landing at $200 by 2030. For comparison, the same note plots Bitcoin at $500,000 and Ethereum at $40,000 for the end of the decade.
Kendrick anticipates a notable expansion of asset tokenization, forecasting that the on-chain value of tokenized assets will rise from roughly $340 billion now to $4 trillion by late 2028. He further projects that assets deployed in decentralized finance (DeFi) will surge 37-fold, reaching $2.7 trillion by 2030.
According to the bank, Chainlink’s revenue model benefits directly from the growth of tokenized and DeFi assets. As Chainlink charges for transmitting data and facilitating asset transfers across blockchains, Standard Chartered estimates its fee volume could climb 25 times from current levels, with token prices assumed to track fee growth.
Chainlink currently secures over $110 billion in total value, covering about 70% of all oracle-dependent DeFi value globally and more than 80% on Ethereum. Aave V3 accounts for 44% of this secured value alone.
Standard Chartered also highlights Chainlink’s wide-ranging partnerships, citing major institutions such as Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, JP Morgan, Mastercard, UBS, Fidelity, and S&P Global. The bank expects that business from off-chain clients—like tokenized funds and bonds requiring net asset values, rates, and attestations—will make up a growing share of Chainlink’s fee revenues in the future.
Mini dictionary: Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that supplies real-world data to blockchains and facilitates secure communication between different blockchain platforms. Oracles are essential for DeFi and tokenized asset markets to function.
Competition and security concerns
Despite its strong position, Chainlink faces competition in blockchain interoperability. Kendrick’s report notes that Chainlink is currently outpaced by LayerZero in interoperability functions. However, more than $7 billion in token value has moved from older bridges to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) since a $292 million exploit was reported in April. In the second quarter, CCIP’s transaction volume reached $4.9 billion—a 353% year-on-year increase.
Tensions remain between LayerZero and Chainlink in the wake of last April’s exploit. Following the incident, KelpDAO said it would transition from LayerZero to Chainlink, though LayerZero contests the claim that its protocol was responsible for the loss.
| Metric | Current | 2030 Target |
|---|---|---|
| LINK price | $8.25 | $200 |
| Bitcoin price | ~$68,500* | $500,000 |
| Ethereum price | ~$3,600* | $40,000 |
| Tokenized assets on-chain | $340 billion | $4 trillion |
| Assets deployed in DeFi | N/A | $2.7 trillion |
*Current BTC and ETH prices approximated, as not specified in news.
Uniswap and DeFi surge on bullish forecasts
The coverage has driven renewed bullish sentiment in DeFi. Uniswap’s governance token, UNI, climbed to a local high of $3.70 in the past day, marking a gain of nearly 20%. UNI is now trading at $3.63, up about 48% on the week, and pushing Uniswap’s total market capitalization to $2.26 billion on daily trading volumes near $864 million.
Standard Chartered’s optimism has focused not only on Chainlink but also on leading DeFi protocols. Kendrick’s June note outlined $100 price targets for Uniswap, $3,500 for Aave, and $60 for Morpho, all underpinned by his model projecting a 37-fold growth in assets deployed in DeFi by 2030. While LINK’s response has been muted, UNI rallied sharply following the release of the report.
Risks identified include the possibility that institutional tokenization scales up more slowly than anticipated, pilot projects struggle to transition to recurring processes, specialist competitors capture market share, and unforeseen technical failures undermine trust.
At present, investor optimism has buoyed select DeFi assets as markets digest new targets and growth forecasts.
