Standard Chartered initiated coverage of Chainlink (LINK) with a $200 price forecast for end of 2030. Geoff Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, detailed the target in a note titled "Chainlink, Owning the Rails."
The forecast relies on expansion of tokenized assets. Kendrick projects on-chain tokenized assets will climb from approximately $340 billion today to $4 trillion by end of 2028—a 12-fold increase from current levels.
He also forecasts $2.7 trillion in assets actively working within decentralized finance by 2030, underpinning all DeFi targets Standard Chartered has published this year.
Chainlink generates revenue by delivering data and facilitating asset movement between blockchains. Standard Chartered assumes Chainlink's fee income will rise roughly 25 times over the forecast period, with the token price tracking that fee growth.
The bank points to Chainlink's existing market position: the network's share of oracle-dependent value stands near 70 percent globally and exceeds 80 percent on Ethereum.
Institutional entities already use Chainlink across several services. Fidelity uses the network to tokenize fund data, while Swift, JPMorgan, Mastercard and UBS use its infrastructure. Tokenized funds and bonds require more data than crypto-native assets, which increases oracle demand as those markets grow.
Chainlink's total value secured topped $110 billion earlier this year, split between cross-chain token transfers and the price feeds that decentralized lending markets rely on to value collateral. The network has processed over $32 trillion in transaction value across seven years.
Standard Chartered outlines a staged path for LINK's price appreciation, setting intermediate targets of $13 by end of 2026, followed by $41, $82 and $133 before reaching $200 in 2030. Chainlink traded near $8.22 on Monday.
The Chainlink note extends a series of long-dated DeFi initiations from Kendrick. He set a $3,500 target for Aave (AAVE) in June and $60 for Morpho (MORPHO) in July, along with $100 for Uniswap (UNI). Morpho gained more than 10 percent on the day its report published.
The same research note maintains a $500,000 target for Bitcoin (BTC) and a $40,000 target for Ethereum (ETH).
Kendrick identified several risks to the $200 LINK target, including slower institutional tokenization, competition from specialist oracle providers and potential technical failures within the network.
