Standard Chartered has expanded its digital asset research by initiating coverage on seven DeFi and onchain infrastructure projects since mid-June. The list includes Uniswap, Aave, Morpho, Chainlink, Sky, Arbitrum, and Ethena. These reports provide institutional-grade models for revenue, usage, token economics, and valuation.
The bank began formal crypto research in September 2021, initially focusing on Bitcoin and Ethereum. The current expansion marks a shift toward sector-level analysis, allowing institutional investors to evaluate decentralized protocols using metrics such as revenue quality, dilution, and competitive positioning.
This research initiative is part of a broader commercial strategy. Standard Chartered integrated its digital-assets research desk into an access-focused framework that includes custody, institutional trading, tokenization, and collateral services. The bank launched spot trading for Bitcoin and Ether in the UK in July 2025 and expanded to the UAE in September 2026.
The bank projects that tokenized assets could reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028. While the current coverage remains concentrated on Ethereum-based projects, the bank has acknowledged Solana's growth in decentralized exchange flows and stablecoin activity, though it has not yet extended its protocol-level coverage to the Solana ecosystem.
