Standard Chartered sees Chainlink price rising 25x by 2030

Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Chainlink with a $200 LINK price target for the end of 2030, a roughly 25-fold increase from its current price near $8, as the bank expects tokenization and decentralized finance activity to drive higher demand for Chainlink’s services.

According to Standard Chartered Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoff Kendrick, LINK could rise to $13 by the end of 2026 before reaching $41, $82 and $133 in the following years and eventually hitting $200 by the end of 2030.

The forecast would put LINK ahead of the bank’s expected returns for Bitcoin and Ethereum over the same period. Standard Chartered has projected Bitcoin at $500,000 and Ethereum at $40,000 by the end of the decade.

LINK was trading around $8.25 at the time of the report, down 0.8% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.

Standard Chartered sees Chainlink fees rising 25-fold

Kendrick’s Chainlink valuation rests partly on the bank’s expectations for tokenized assets and decentralized finance. Standard Chartered expects the value of tokenized assets held on blockchains to increase from roughly $340 billion currently to $4 trillion by the end of 2028.

For DeFi, the bank expects deployed assets to increase 37-fold to $2.7 trillion by 2030. Chainlink could benefit from both markets because its infrastructure supplies blockchain applications with external data and supports transfers between different networks, according to the report.

Based on those projections, Standard Chartered estimated that fees generated by Chainlink could increase about 25 times by 2030. The bank’s LINK valuation assumes the token price will broadly track that increase in fees.

The forecast also depends on Chainlink retaining its position in the oracle market. Standard Chartered estimated that Chainlink currently secures more than $110 billion in value, representing roughly 70% of oracle-dependent DeFi value globally and more than 80% of such value on Ethereum.

Aave V3 alone accounts for about 44% of the value secured by Chainlink, according to the bank.

Kendrick has used the same 37-fold DeFi growth forecast in several recent digital asset research notes. In June, he set a $100 target for Uniswap’s UNI and a $3,500 target for Aave’s AAVE, followed by a $60 target for Morpho in July.

UNI recorded a double-digit gain after Standard Chartered published its coverage, while LINK’s reaction to the latest report has remained more limited.

Institutional clients support the Chainlink thesis

Standard Chartered also based part of its forecast on Chainlink’s work with traditional financial institutions, where the network can provide data needed to operate tokenized funds, bonds and other financial products.

The bank identified Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, JPMorgan, Mastercard, UBS, Fidelity and S&P Global among institutions using Chainlink services. Kendrick expects customers outside crypto-native markets to account for an increasing portion of Chainlink fees as tokenization projects move into production.

Unlike many crypto assets, tokenized financial products can require recurring access to information such as net asset values, interest rates and reserve attestations. Standard Chartered expects those requirements to increase demand for oracle services if more securities and funds move on-chain.

The institutional argument follows several Chainlink projects involving banks and financial market infrastructure.

In June, Chainlink joined Project Pangea alongside FairSquareLab, UniKA and Qivalis to test stablecoin-based foreign exchange settlement between Europe and South Korea. Chainlink said the initiative involves more than 50 banks representing over $10 trillion in assets under management.

The project combines blockchain infrastructure with ISO 20022 messaging and existing Swift systems to test payment-versus-payment settlement using compliant euro and South Korean won stablecoins.

Chainlink CCIP has gained assets from rival bridges

Cross-chain infrastructure forms another part of Standard Chartered’s valuation case, although the bank said Chainlink continues to trail LayerZero in interoperability.

Kendrick reported that more than $7 billion in token value has migrated from legacy bridge infrastructure to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol following a $292 million exploit in April. CCIP quarterly volume reached $4.9 billion during the second quarter, an increase of 353% from a year earlier, according to the note.

Some of those migrations have involved major DeFi protocols and token issuers.

On Aug. 4, BitGo selected Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive cross-chain infrastructure for Wrapped Bitcoin, replacing LayerZero for WBTC transfers. WBTC had a market capitalization of roughly $7.4 billion at the time, making the change one of the largest announced migrations involving Chainlink.

BitGo said it would standardize WBTC deployments around Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard and use CCIP as the default interoperability infrastructure for future digital assets it issues. The structure allows BitGo to retain control over token contracts, transfer limits and operational settings.

Including earlier announcements from Mantle, Lombard, Aave and Kraken, publicly announced migrations from LayerZero to Chainlink infrastructure had reached roughly $14.6 billion after BitGo’s decision.

The migration activity followed the $292 million exploit involving KelpDAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge. KelpDAO blamed LayerZero for the incident and said it planned to rebuild using Chainlink, while LayerZero disputed that characterization.

Aave and stablecoins have expanded Chainlink usage

Chainlink has also added usage through existing DeFi relationships rather than relying only on projects switching infrastructure providers.

In July, Aave expanded its use of CCIP by making it the default cross-chain infrastructure for activity across the Aave App and Stable Vaults. The integration extended an existing setup under which CCIP already handled transfers of Aave’s GHO stablecoin and cross-chain governance messages.

Aave said the expanded deployment allows CCIP to process deposits, withdrawals, vault rebalancing, yield optimization and asset transfers. Stable Vaults use the infrastructure to move deposits between Ethereum, Base and Arbitrum without requiring users to manually bridge assets.

GHO and Savings GHO also use Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard. Aave said GHO was available across eight blockchain networks in July, with CCIP responsible for transfers between supported chains.

United Stables adopted Chainlink infrastructure the same month after its U stablecoin surpassed $1 billion in circulating supply and $2.5 billion in daily trading volume.

Chainlink Data Feeds and Proof of Reserve went live for U, while United Stables said it planned to integrate CCIP for future cross-chain transfers. The company said its Data Feeds support pricing information used across more than 20 lending protocols, while Proof of Reserve lets users and applications verify U’s collateral on-chain.

Standard Chartered’s projections assume deployments of this type continue expanding as tokenized assets and DeFi grow. However, the bank identified several conditions that could prevent LINK from reaching its targets.

Kendrick said institutional tokenization could develop more slowly than the bank expects, while pilot projects may fail to become recurring production workflows. Standard Chartered also identified competition from specialist data and interoperability providers as a risk to Chainlink’s market position.

Technical failures could also damage confidence in Chainlink’s infrastructure, according to the report, particularly as more financial assets depend on its oracle and cross-chain services.

Under Kendrick’s staged forecast, LINK would first need to reach $13 by the end of 2026 before advancing to $41, $82 and $133 on the path to Standard Chartered’s $200 target in 2030.