Standard Chartered Sees DeFi Hitting $2.7 Trillion by 2030

Kendrick singled out Uniswap as a natural venue for tokenized asset flows. He cited the protocol's scale, reputation, and track record through multiple crypto cycles. For traditional financial institutions, reliability matters more than short-term yield, and Uniswap meets that bar better than newer protocols, he said.

Not everyone shares the optimism. Chris Kim, CEO of Axis, pointed to fragmented liquidity as a structural problem. Issuing the same asset on multiple blockchains creates price gaps and raises transaction costs, even if aggregate market value rises, Kim said.

Oya Celiktemur, head of sales at Ondo Finance for the EMEA region, made a similar point at Paris Blockchain Week in April. An illiquid asset does not become liquid simply by being tokenized, she said. Those limits deserve attention alongside the growth projections.

The Standard Chartered note sets an ambitious quantified target for the next DeFi cycle. The convergence of institutional adoption, RWA growth, and protocol maturation creates a plausible path. Reaching $2.7 trillion will require concrete solutions on fragmented liquidity, regulatory clarity, and cross-chain interoperability. The potential is real, and so are the obstacles.