Standard Chartered Analyst Projects 400% Gain for Sky Protocol’s SKY Token by 2028
Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, initiated coverage of the SKY governance token on Sept. 11 with a price target of $0.325 by the end of 2028, according to TheStreet via Yahoo Finance.
Against Kendrick's cited starting price of $0.065, that target represents a 400% gain over roughly two years.
Sky Protocol, formerly known as MakerDAO, is a decentralized finance (DeFi) project built on the Ethereum blockchain.
Its primary product is the USDS stablecoin, pegged 1-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, which carries a market capitalization above $6 billion and accounts for more than 2% of the total stablecoin market, per on-chain analytics platform DeFiLlama.
Why Kendrick Compares Sky to a Federal Bank
Kendrick described Sky Protocol as functioning like a central bank in decentralized form. His reasoning centers on three characteristics: it issues stablecoins, operates a formal governance structure, and extends credit at a wholesale interest rate.
Sky is also the largest issuer of yield-bearing stablecoins in the DeFi space.
The yield-bearing mechanism works through a staking product. Users deposit USDS and receive sUSDS tokens in return, earning staking rewards while retaining the ability to deploy sUSDS across the broader DeFi market.
As of the report date, sUSDS carried a total value locked of $4.59 billion and offered an annual percentage yield (APY, the effective annual return including compounding) of 3.6%, per DeFiLlama.
SKY token holders earn returns primarily through staking rewards, with token buybacks providing an additional return channel, Kendrick noted.
SKY's Projected Path Relative to Bitcoin and Ether
Kendrick's 400% target implies SKY would roughly match the percentage performance he expects from Ether (ETH) but surpass Bitcoin (BTC) on a gains basis over the same period.
Standard Chartered's broader 2028 forecasts, also attributed to Kendrick by TheStreet, call for Bitcoin reaching $300,000 and Ethereum reaching $18,000 by year-end 2028.
SKY is currently the 62nd-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with a valuation of $1.38 billion as of the report date.
What the Coverage Means for DeFi Governance Tokens
Standard Chartered, founded in 1853, has not previously initiated formal coverage of a DeFi governance token, making the report an early instance of institutional research extending into on-chain asset classes.
Kendrick's framing applies a traditional financial institution framework to a protocol governed by token holders rather than regulators or shareholders.
Roundtable.io summarized the thesis this way: Sky dominates the yield-bearing stablecoin market in a manner that has few parallels among conventional assets. No investment recommendation was made by either outlet.
The SKY token's governance function gives holders voting rights over the protocol's future direction. That structure sits at the center of Kendrick's valuation argument, as protocol fee revenue and buyback activity flow back to stakers and token holders.