Standard Chartered: DeFi Resilient Despite KelpDAO Exploit Impact

Standard Chartered has expressed confidence in the resilience of decentralized finance (DeFi) despite recent setbacks. According to NS3.AI, the bank described DeFi as "bent, not broken" following the KelpDAO exploit on April 18, which resulted in $292 million in losses and affected the AAVE platform. The incident led to a 38% decline in AAVE deposits and a 31% drop in active loans, as stolen tokens were used as collateral for borrowing other assets. Geoff Kendrick from Standard Chartered remains optimistic, projecting that tokenized real-world assets will achieve a market capitalization of $2 trillion by the end of 2028, a significant increase from $35 billion in October 2025.