Standard Chartered is building an institutional research universe for DeFi

Seven DeFi and onchain infrastructure initiations in little more than three months show crypto research moving beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum toward the kind of sector-level analysis institutions use to compare businesses, risks and returns. Ethena is the seventh DeFi or onchain infrastructure project Standard Chartered has initiated coverage on since mid-June, following Uniswap, Aave, Morpho, Chainlink, Sky and Arbitrum. The reports span decentralized trading, lending, stablecoin issuance, data infrastructure and blockchain execution, with individual models for revenue, usage, token economics and valuation. Crypto Briefing has covered the individual calls as they arrived, including Uniswap, Aave, Morpho, Chainlink, Sky and Arbitrum. The Ethena initiation adds another token target. The emerging coverage universe is the more interesting signal. Institutional markets require more than custody and execution. Portfolio managers need frameworks for deciding what an asset is worth, risk committees need metrics they can interrogate, and investment committees need a basis for comparing one exposure with another. Research is part of that infrastructure. Standard Chartered makes that connection...