Standard Chartered has initiated coverage on seven DeFi and onchain infrastructure protocols in just over three months, with Ethena becoming the seventh project to enter the bank's research universe since mid-June.

The bank's digital-asset research desk, established in September 2021 with Bitcoin and Ethereum coverage, has moved beyond layer-one networks into specific financial applications running onchain. Ethena's initiation follows six earlier calls, according to Standard Chartered's research notes.

What does seven DeFi initiations in three months signal?

The pace reflects a shift in institutional crypto research from single-asset price forecasting toward sector-level analysis. Each protocol carries an individual valuation framework:

• Uniswap: trading and liquidity model
• Aave, Morpho: lending volumes, deposits, revenue
• Chainlink: data, interoperability, tokenization infrastructure
• Arbitrum: fees from external chains using its technology
• Sky: stablecoin issuance and wholesale capital provision
• Ethena: stablecoin growth, yield generation, token buybacks

The May investor presentation makes the institutional logic explicit. Standard Chartered placed its dedicated digital-assets research desk under the "access" portion of its digital-asset strategy, alongside custody, institutional trading, tokenization and collateral services. The bank described those capabilities as "part of a broader effort to give clients access to digital assets inside a bank-grade framework."

How does this connect to Standard Chartered's digital-asset business?

The research push sits inside a wider commercial program. The bank launched deliverable institutional Bitcoin and Ether spot trading through its UK branch in July 2025 and expanded the service into the UAE in September 2026. Standard Chartered offers digital-asset custody, has worked with BlackRock and OKX on using tokenized money-market assets as collateral, and completed live digital-asset prime-brokerage transactions with LMAX Group in July.

Its May presentation describes digital assets as a business that can "deepen client relationships and increase the bank's share of client financial activity." Research is one of several capabilities the bank treats as part of that strategy rather than an isolated experiment.

Why does the coverage still center on Ethereum?

Six of the seven protocols connect directly to Ethereum's DeFi market:

• Uniswap, Aave, Morpho, Sky and Ethena grew out of Ethereum's application layer
• Arbitrum extends Ethereum's execution layer
• Chainlink is multi-chain but became core infrastructure for Ethereum lending and derivatives

Ethereum's deeper institutional plumbing helps explain the concentration. DefiLlama data show the chain held about $53.1 billion in DeFi TVL and $146.6 billion in stablecoins, against $6.5 billion and $16.3 billion respectively on Solana.

Standard Chartered expects tokenized assets to reach about $4 trillion by the end of 2028, with a growing share becoming active inside DeFi. If that migration runs primarily through Ethereum and its rollups, the projects in the bank's coverage universe are plausible destinations.

What does Solana expose about the research gap?

Solana's onchain metrics have moved past Ethereum on several activity measures over 24-hour windows recorded by DefiLlama. Solana registered about $2.53 billion in decentralized exchange volume against Ethereum's $2.25 billion, 2.95 million active addresses against roughly 617,000, and $6.09 million in application revenue against $2.2 million. Solana is generating comparable trading volume with roughly one-eighth of Ethereum's DeFi TVL.

Standard Chartered has flagged the shift in its existing Solana research, noting that decentralized exchange flows are moving from memecoin trading toward stablecoin pairs and micropayments, with stablecoins turning over two to three times faster than on Ethereum. The bank has not yet published protocol-level coverage of the applications driving that activity.

How is the broader institutional research field taking shape?

Galaxy has published a DeFi risk-rating framework. Coinbase distributes market and tokenomics research to institutional clients. Grayscale analyzes DeFi through its Financials sector. The combined output gives investment committees a shared basis for comparing revenue, dilution, governance and the relationship between protocol activity and token value.

The next evidence to watch is protocol-level coverage of the applications driving Solana's stablecoin payments, trading volume and fee revenue, followed by the custody and financing support that would make those assets accessible to more institutions. If research remains concentrated around Ethereum while Solana continues to gain users, liquidity and revenue, the gap will show how far institutional underwriting trails onchain growth.