华尔街重估DeFi：渣打研报为何押注UNI四年40倍？

Original author: Jae, PANews

A traditional bank research report has reignited the somewhat quiet DeFi sector.

On June 15, Geoff Kendrick, Head of Global Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered Bank, published the first coverage report on the decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, featuring a bold prediction that caught the crypto market's attention: the price of Uniswap's governance token, UNI, would surge approximately 40-fold by the end of 2030, reaching the $100 mark.

At the time, UNI was trading at just around $2.6.

UNI, once derided as a "governance token for the air," is now being revalued by Wall Street as a productive asset with network effects. While the 40-fold forward narrative is tempting enough, the journey to the finish line may not be smooth sailing.

Wall Street's Script for UNI's 40x Growth: Four Numbers, One Theme

In Standard Chartered's analytical framework, Uniswap is being embedded within a valuation model driven by the deep integration of traditional finance and the on-chain world.

Exponential Growth of RWA Tokenization ($340 Billion → $4 Trillion)

The starting point for growth is the wave of Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization. Standard Chartered predicts that the global scale of on-chain tokenized assets will experience exponential growth, soaring from approximately $340 billion today to $4 trillion by the end of 2028. Asset management giants like Fidelity and BlackRock are moving traditional assets—stocks, treasuries, money market funds—onto blockchains in bulk, expanding the liquidity of on-chain tokenized assets at a pace far exceeding industry expectations.

This effectively builds a larger reservoir for the DeFi track: the asset base must first accumulate for subsequent financial activities like trading, lending, and staking to have sufficient underlying assets.

DeFi Penetration Rate Jump (3.5% → 30%) Boosts TVL (37x)

Asset tokenization is just the first step; the stagnant capital must be set in motion. Simply put, only when assets flow into DeFi protocols can they be converted into protocol revenue and value. Standard Chartered estimates that currently only about 3.5% of tokenized assets are deployed within the DeFi ecosystem, a proportion expected to rise to 30% by 2030.

Driven by the dual engines of native crypto asset growth and RWA on-chain adoption, total DeFi TVL (Total Value Locked) is projected to surge 37-fold from current levels to approximately $2.7 trillion by 2030.

The Fee Switch Provides Price Support (40x)

As the primary hub for on-chain liquidity, Uniswap is poised to be the biggest beneficiary of this capital flood. Consequently, its token, UNI, is expected to see a nearly 40-fold increase from $2.6 to $100.

Standard Chartered outlined a long-term price path for UNI: $6.5 by end of 2026 → $20 by end of 2027 → $40 by end of 2028 → $65 by end of 2029 → $100 by end of 2030.

Historically, UNI was dismissed as an "air coin" by the market because it only conferred governance rights without capturing cash flow. Towards the end of last year, Uniswap activated its fee switch, officially ushering UNI into a deflationary era.

The report notes that Uniswap burned 100 million UNI in a one-time event on December 28, 2024, plus an additional 5 million UNI, reducing the total supply from 1 billion to 895 million, and the circulating supply to 622 million. This supply contraction provides support for the UNI price.

Additionally, Uniswap has generated approximately $21 million in protocol fees. The linear relationship between fees and trading volume implies that as tokenized assets flow into the protocol, the fee switch will automatically trigger more burning. This means UNI is transforming from a "pure governance tool" into a "productive asset with deflationary characteristics," directly narrowing the valuation multiple gap between Uniswap and listed exchanges like Coinbase.

Notably, Geoffrey Kendrick also drew a vivid business analogy in the report, comparing Uniswap to YouTube and Coinbase to Netflix.

• Coinbase (Netflix Model): Centralized operations, heavy asset investment requiring significant capital support. Listing tokens and compliance involve rigorous vetting, high marginal costs for expansion, and limited asset coverage.
• Uniswap (YouTube Model): An open liquidity pool architecture where any user can be a "content creator" (liquidity provider). The platform incurs no high costs for asset listings. In scenarios involving stablecoin trading, liquid staking derivatives, and niche tokens, this open model's network effects and long-tail advantages are difficult for centralized exchanges (CEXs) to match.

This virtuous cycle of increased usage driving further growth is Uniswap's moat for maintaining its leading position.

More importantly, Standard Chartered believes Uniswap is far from a simple "retail DEX application." Its essence is an integrable market infrastructure. Once the RWA scale expands, traditional financial institutions can directly "plug" their assets into Uniswap's liquidity pools for trading—a function the traditional financial market cannot achieve on its own.

Uniswap Becomes the Preferred Interface for Traditional Capital but Faces Pressure from Emerging DEXs and Aggregators

While Wall Street's long-term perspective is appealing, Uniswap's actual situation in the crypto market is far from the linear growth depicted in the research report.

Since its inception in 2018, Uniswap has facilitated cumulative trading volume exceeding $3.7 trillion, generated over $5.6 billion in cumulative fees, and holds a TVL of approximately $2.88 billion.

In terms of market share, Uniswap's DEX throne remains secure. Whether on the Ethereum mainnet or across major L2 ecosystems, Uniswap dominates in trading volume and liquidity depth, with no competitor posing a substantial threat.

A more crucial signal comes from the institutional side. In February this year, BlackRock's tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, announced it would provide trading on UniswapX and strategically purchased UNI tokens. With the adoption of UniswapX, which introduces features like off-chain routing, gasless transactions, and MEV (Miner Extractable Value) resistance, it significantly narrows the experiential gap between DEXs and CEXs, becoming the preferred on-ramp for traditional capital.

Similarly, last Friday (June 12), Fidelity deployed liquidity for its stablecoin FIDD on Uniswap. The protocol's concentrated liquidity model is currently the most efficient pricing mechanism on-chain. Once compliant RWA assets go on-chain at scale, Uniswap could potentially become the on-chain "New York Stock Exchange," holding pricing power over assets.

Wall Street's capital is flowing on-chain, and Uniswap is the faucet. Wall Street institutions are using Uniswap as the on-chain interface for compliant assets, and UNI is aligning its valuation logic accordingly as "on-chain routing infrastructure."

While the endpoint of $100 is enticing, two major mountains stand in Uniswap's path to the summit, potentially delaying or even invalidating this long-term outlook.

• Traffic Interception by Emerging DEXs and Aggregators (Competition Risk): Solana-based DEXs like Jupiter and Raydium, leveraging the meme coin mania and extremely low transaction costs, have captured massive retail traffic. Meanwhile, aggregators like 1inch and CowSwap intercept users at the front-end, reducing Uniswap to a mere “back-end liquidity pool” in some ecosystems, continuously eroding its brand premium and user mindshare.
• Delayed Tokenization Realization (Macro Risk): Standard Chartered's valuation heavily relies on the assumption of “DeFi TVL reaching $2.7 trillion by 2030.” If global legislative progress on tokenization lags expectations, or if large-scale security incidents or systemic risks occur, the penetration rate of RWAs could slow significantly, severely pushing back the timeline for this grand narrative to materialize.

Looking at the most straightforward price action, UNI currently trades below $3, down over 92% from its all-time high in May 2021.

The fee switch has brought deflation but not a price reversal. The market's tepid sentiment towards DeFi narratives, liquidity droughts, and persistently high macro interest rates are all heavily weighing on UNI's valuation.

However, this might precisely be the source of the “40x potential” in Standard Chartered's eyes: starting from a low base.

Standard Chartered's initiation of coverage on UNI with a $100 price target carries more significance as a bellwether than as a precise price prediction. In reality, whether the prediction is accurate matters less than the fact that Wall Street's perception of DeFi is evolving: from the early years of “wild growth and speculative bubbles” towards a rational business assessment of “capital efficiency, network effects, and cash flow value.”

It must be noted that Wall Street research reports often excel in macro logic but fall short on micro risks. For investors involved, the 40-fold endpoint is tempting, but the road to 2030 is undoubtedly fraught with challenges.

Whether UNI can genuinely capture the benefits of a $4 trillion tokenization dividend depends on its ability to master this high-difficulty balancing act between the principles of decentralization and the realities of global regulatory compliance.

More than the 40x price increase, the 4-year wait is the true test of conviction.