Standard Chartered Bank: Tokenization could drive the scale of DeFi assets to $2.7 trillion, growing 37 times by 2030

According to Cointelegraph, Standard Chartered Bank predicts in its latest research report that by 2030, the locked assets in decentralized finance (DeFi) will reach approximately $2.7 trillion, growing about 37 times from current levels. The report points out that this growth will be primarily driven by the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) and the migration of crypto-native assets to on-chain protocols.

Geoff Kendrick, Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered, stated that the next round of "structural growth opportunities" in digital assets will come from DeFi protocols, and it is expected that by 2030, the proportion of tokenized assets entering the DeFi system will increase from the current approximately 3.5% to about 30%.

Current data shows that only about 3% of stablecoins and 10% of tokenized real assets are actually used in DeFi protocols, indicating significant room for penetration. The report also emphasizes that achieving the $2.7 trillion target will rely on the rapid expansion of tokenized asset scale and a significant improvement in on-chain capital efficiency. Previously, Standard Chartered predicted that by 2028, the scale of tokenized non-stablecoin real assets would reach $2 trillion, with money market funds and U.S. stocks becoming major components.

At the infrastructure level, the report mentions that decentralized trading protocols like Uniswap could become important trading hubs for tokenized assets and notes that traditional financial institutions will focus more on security and stability when entering the on-chain market. However, analysts also warn that tokenization does not necessarily lead to increased liquidity, and fragmentation between different chains and asset standards may still limit market depth and unified pricing capability.