Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Chainlink with a $200 end-2030 target for LINK, a forecast that would represent roughly a 25-fold rise from the approximately $8 price cited in the bank’s research note. LINK traded near $8.31 on Aug. 10.
The bank’s outlook rests on a projected expansion of tokenized financial assets and the infrastructure needed to operate them across blockchains. Geoff Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered, argued that Chainlink could capture growing demand for data feeds, cross-chain communication and compliance tools as funds, bonds, stablecoins and other assets move onchain.
Standard Chartered forecast that the value of tokenized assets held on blockchain networks will reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028, compared with about $340 billion at the time of its estimate. It also expects tokenized and crypto-native assets used in decentralized finance to reach $2.7 trillion by the end of 2030, representing a 37-fold increase under the bank’s assumptions.
Chainlink’s role in that process is to supply information and messaging that smart contracts cannot obtain on their own. A tokenized fund, for example, may require net asset value and share-class data; a bond may require interest-rate and payment-schedule information; and a stablecoin may need reserve attestations. Standard Chartered expects the number and financial value of these data requests to grow alongside tokenized markets.
Fees and interoperability underpin the forecast
Standard Chartered projected that Chainlink’s fees could rise about 25 times by the end of 2030. The forecast incorporates revenue from Chainlink’s established oracle services as well as its interoperability products, particularly the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, or CCIP.
Oracles are services that carry verified external information, such as asset prices or reserve data, to a blockchain application. Interoperability services perform a different task: they help applications and tokens communicate or move between separate blockchain networks. The distinction matters for Chainlink’s business model because tokenization may require both reliable financial data and the ability to settle or transfer assets across different systems.
The bank cited growing CCIP usage as evidence that cross-chain infrastructure could become a larger contributor to Chainlink’s network activity. According to Standard Chartered, more than $7 billion in token value moved to CCIP following a $292 million cyberattack on a LayerZero bridge in April 2026.
Standard Chartered said quarterly CCIP volume reached $4.9 billion in the second quarter, up 353% from a year earlier. The figures point to a market where security incidents can alter the selection of bridge and messaging infrastructure, particularly for institutions and protocols moving higher-value assets.
Cross-chain systems have become a sensitive area of blockchain security. Bridges have historically been a frequent target for attackers because they often hold or control assets across multiple networks. Standard Chartered’s thesis assumes that demand will increasingly favor systems with established operational records, rather than providers offering only one element of tokenization infrastructure.
DeFi remains Chainlink’s current economic base
While the bank’s long-range estimate leans heavily on institutional tokenization, Standard Chartered said decentralized finance remains Chainlink’s principal source of economic activity today. It put Chainlink’s total value secured above $110 billion, equal to roughly 70% of oracle-dependent value across global DeFi.
On Ethereum, Standard Chartered estimated Chainlink’s share at more than 80% of oracle-dependent value. The network has also enabled more than $32 trillion in transaction value to date, according to the bank.
Aave V3 accounted for 44% of Chainlink’s total value secured, Standard Chartered said. That concentration shows the network’s continued reliance on major DeFi lending protocols even as it pursues business with banks, market-infrastructure providers and asset managers.
The reliance cuts both ways. Large DeFi deployments offer a substantial existing base for oracle fees, but they also expose Chainlink’s current activity to the growth and competitive position of a relatively small number of applications. Standard Chartered’s 2030 forecast requires institutional use cases to become a meaningful addition rather than remaining mainly pilot projects.
Reserve mechanism links fees to LINK purchases
The bank also highlighted Chainlink Reserve, a mechanism designed to convert network fees into LINK. Standard Chartered said the reserve held about 5 million LINK, valued at roughly $40 million based on the prices cited in its note.
Around two-thirds of fees have flowed into the reserve since it launched, according to Standard Chartered. If usage grows as projected, the arrangement would create a direct channel between network fees and purchases of LINK for the reserve, though its eventual scale depends on actual service adoption and the share of fees routed through the program.
Standard Chartered listed Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, JPMorgan, Mastercard, UBS, Fidelity and S&P Global among organizations using Chainlink services. It also referred to an integration connecting Swift’s messaging system with UBS for tokenized fund workflows, illustrating the type of institutional process Chainlink aims to support.
Such integrations place Chainlink in a market where the challenge is less about proving that tokenization is technically possible and more about connecting blockchain systems to existing financial operations, data standards and messaging networks.
Bank flags adoption, competition and technical risks
Kendrick identified three main risks to Standard Chartered’s forecast: slower institutional tokenization, competition from providers focused on a single product category, and technical or configuration failures that could damage confidence in the network.
The adoption risk is central to the $200 target. Banks, custodians and fund managers have conducted numerous tokenization trials, but Standard Chartered’s valuation assumes a larger portion of those efforts will advance into live financial products with recurring transaction and data needs.
Competition could also emerge from specialized providers offering dedicated price feeds, messaging, identity or compliance services. Chainlink’s advantage, in Standard Chartered’s assessment, comes from combining oracle infrastructure with cross-chain tools and a large existing DeFi footprint. Its forecast depends on that integrated offering remaining competitive as the tokenized-asset market expands.
To understand Chainlink’s role in real-world asset tokenization, explore our guide on tokenized equities and how they work.
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