SKY Is Expecting its Rise to $0.325 by 2028
Standard Chartered has initiated research coverage of Sky’s SKY token with a price target of $0.325 by the end of 2028, roughly five times the $0.065 level cited in the bank’s report. It’s a notable move: a major global bank publishing a formal, multi-year price forecast on a DeFi governance token, treating it as a research subject with the same seriousness typically reserved for equities or macro assets.
The Call
The forecast, shared in a Friday report obtained by Cointelegraph, comes from Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research. Kendrick’s framing is what makes the report worth paying attention to beyond the headline number: he described Sky, the DeFi protocol formerly known as MakerDAO, as functioning somewhat like a “federal bank,” on the basis that it issues stablecoins, operates its own governance framework, and charges borrowers a wholesale interest rate on the capital it lends out. That’s a deliberately institutional lens for a protocol that started life as one of DeFi’s earliest and most experimental lending platforms.
Kendrick’s note also lays out where he sees the value actually flowing to SKY holders. Staking rewards are described as the primary channel, with token buybacks contributing a smaller share of total value returned. That distinction matters for how the token might behave relative to other governance tokens where buybacks alone are expected to carry most of the price case.
To put the forecast in context: Standard Chartered’s broader crypto outlook through 2028 has Ether reaching $18,000 and Bitcoin reaching $300,000 by the same date. Kendrick’s note frames the SKY target as implying the token would broadly keep pace with Ether’s projected trajectory while outperforming Bitcoin’s over that stretch, a notably bullish relative call for a mid-cap DeFi governance token to be positioned alongside two of the market’s largest assets.
Why Sky, and Why Now
The reasoning behind the call rests heavily on Sky’s actual market position rather than pure narrative. Sky currently ranks as the third-largest stablecoin issuer in the market, trailing only Tether and Circle, the two dominant incumbents that together account for the overwhelming majority of total stablecoin supply. More specifically, Sky holds the position of the largest issuer of yield-bearing stablecoins, a category that has been growing faster than the stablecoin market overall as more capital looks for a return rather than just a stable store of value.
That yield-bearing product, sUSDS, is central to the bull case. According to DeFiLlama, sUSDS currently holds $4.5 billion in total value locked and offers a 3.6% annual percentage yield. sUSDS works by letting holders deposit USDS, Sky’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, into the Sky Savings Rate module and earn a return funded by the protocol’s own revenue, primarily interest paid by borrowers and income from the real-world assets and crypto collateral backing the system. The token’s redemption value rises over time as that revenue accrues, rather than requiring holders to manually claim separate reward payments.
The bet embedded in Standard Chartered’s forecast is straightforward, if not without real risk: as USDS adoption continues to grow and Sky’s overall borrowing capacity expands alongside it, the protocol’s revenue base grows too, and more of that revenue flows to SKY holders through staking rewards and buybacks. If that growth trajectory holds through 2028, the bank’s math points to a fivefold increase in the token’s value from current levels.
Reading the Forecast With Appropriate Caution
A few things are worth keeping in mind about any long-dated price target like this one. A 2028 forecast is inherently a statement about a multi-year trajectory, not a near-term prediction, and it depends on a chain of assumptions holding roughly true along the way: continued USDS adoption at pace, stable or growing borrowing demand, governance decisions that keep directing revenue toward token holders rather than other priorities, and no major disruption to Sky’s position in an increasingly competitive stablecoin issuance market.
It’s also worth noting that a single bank’s research note, however credible the analyst or however detailed the reasoning, is one institution’s model of the future, not a guarantee. Standard Chartered has been an active and vocal publisher of bullish crypto price targets over the past year across multiple assets, and its research arm has built a track record of getting behind tokenization and DeFi infrastructure plays specifically. That’s useful context for weighing the credibility of the call, but it doesn’t substitute for independent research into Sky’s own fundamentals, competitive position, and governance decisions before treating a $0.325 target as anything more than one well-reasoned estimate among many possible outcomes.
The Bigger Picture
What this report captures, regardless of whether the specific price target proves accurate, is a broader shift in how traditional finance is starting to treat DeFi infrastructure. A major bank’s research division publishing a formal multi-year price target on a governance token, backed by a “federal bank” framework comparing stablecoin issuance and lending spreads to how a traditional financial institution generates revenue, is a meaningfully different level of institutional engagement than DeFi protocols saw even a year or two ago.
Sky’s position as the largest yield-bearing stablecoin issuer, sitting behind only Tether and Circle in overall stablecoin market share, puts it in a genuinely interesting spot as institutional capital increasingly looks past pure stablecoin exposure toward yield-generating variants specifically. Whether SKY reaches $0.325 by 2028 remains, as with any multi-year forecast, an open question. What’s already happened is that a major global bank decided the protocol was worth building a formal research thesis around in the first place.