Standard Chartered Bank has initiated coverage on Morpho, the second-largest decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol after Aave, with an end-2030 price target of $60 for its native token. The call, issued Wednesday by the bank's Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoff Kendrick, sparked a double-digit intraday rally in MORPHO.
The forecast lays out a multi-year trajectory: $3.50 in 2026, $11.00 in 2027, $22.00 in 2028, $40.00 in 2029, and $60.00 by the close of 2030. That path implies roughly 2,787% upside from current levels and, according to Standard Chartered, would see MORPHO outperform both bitcoin and ether over the same period.
"We are bullish on the outlook for Morpho," Kendrick wrote in the client note, anchoring his view on the protocol’s dual business model. Morpho Markets operates a lending structure similar to Aave and currently holds about $5.5 billion in deposits, while Morpho Vaults — an infrastructure layer that lets professional managers and on-chain banks deploy capital — account for $4.3 billion.
The $60 target leans heavily on a projected 37‑fold expansion of total assets deployed across DeFi by 2030. Kendrick argued that Morpho Vaults are well positioned to attract traditional finance-linked capital, backed by existing custody and distribution integrations with firms including Fireblocks, Anchorage, Taurus and Bitwise. He highlighted that vault curators such as Steakhouse Financial, which manages nearly $2 billion in assets, have become a key channel for on-chain asset allocation.
Standard Chartered also contrasted Morpho’s fee model with other covered DeFi protocols. While Uniswap and Aave have introduced protocol fee mechanisms, Morpho currently operates at a 0% take rate, leaving all lending income to depositors via vault structures. The bank noted that Morpho Labs recently raised $175 million in a round led by Paradigm and a16z, providing a strong balance sheet to support its roadmap.
On the day of the announcement, MORPHO traded above $2, up roughly 13% — the largest single-day gain on record, with volume exceeding 1.11 million tokens. The move broke a multi‑week consolidation below the $2 level and pushed RSI to its strongest reading in the observed window, though not yet into overbought territory. At press time, Aave’s AAVE was changing hands at $85.47 (down 1.69%) and Uniswap’s UNI at $2.73 (down 1.49%).
