Standard Chartered Bets Sky Can 5x SKY by 2028

Standard Chartered set Sky’s SKY token at $0.325 by the end of 2028, five times the $0.065 used in a Friday research note. Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, is pricing a 5x rise in the value Sky passes to token holders, then assuming the SKY crypto token follows.

That leftover sits behind a 3.6% rate paid to sUSDS savers and behind a solvency reserve that is still short of its own target. SKY traded near $0.06 on Friday, up 2% from a 24-hour low of $0.0580, and was still down 14% on the week.

Standard Chartered’s SKY Call Is a Pass-Through Wager

The Friday note is the bank’s first research coverage of Sky, the protocol that used to be MakerDAO. Kendrick’s target is exact math from the $0.065 reference price, not a rounded slogan, and he ties the multiple to cash that reaches holders rather than to a chart pattern.

We estimate that the value Sky passes on to SKY token holders will increase 5x by end-2028 from today’s level, driven by growth in both the Sky ecosystem and USDS outstanding. All other things being equal, this should drive a 5x rise in the SKY price.

Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research, Standard Chartered Friday report

He also wrote that the path implies SKY would roughly match ether and beat bitcoin through 2028. The same desk still has ether at $18,000 and bitcoin at $300,000 by then, and it still has the broader stablecoin market at $2 trillion.

The first stage of the forecast is not new users. Kendrick said Sky could send more of the income it already earns once it has a larger financial buffer. Staking rewards are the main return line in his model. Token buybacks are the smaller one.

DeFi’s Federal Bank in Kendrick’s Model

“In the off-chain world, Sky would be akin to a central bank, issuing currency (USDS and DAI), setting governance rules for the agents, and lending money at wholesale interest rates,” Kendrick wrote. The agents, in that picture, are the commercial banks. They borrow at the wholesale rate and try to earn a spread on where they put the money.

Sky already sits as the third-largest stablecoin issuer after Tether and Circle, and as the largest issuer of yield-bearing stablecoins. USDS is the dollar token. DAI is still in the system as the older twin. sUSDS is the savings receipt. SKY is the governance coin, and it is not a claim on the savings rate.

Agent borrowing is the growth engine the note actually names. Spark, Grove, and Obex had borrowed a combined $5.9 billion in USDS at the time of the report, with more than $5.5 billion of that sitting in yield strategies. Allocations are public on the live Sky Protocol financial dashboard, which Sky Frontier Foundation turned on May 6.

sUSDS Holders Collect the First Cut of Revenue

Sky Frontier Foundation, which publishes the protocol’s accounts, put Q2 2026 gross take at gross protocol revenue of $107.35 million for the three months ended June 30, up 10.5% from $97.15 million a year earlier. Net protocol revenue was $40.09 million, a 37.3% margin, and up 25.1% year over year. Trailing twelve-month net protocol revenue stood at $159.63 million.

Net protocol surplus was $33.29 million, against $32.04 million in the same quarter of 2025. Those two lines are not the same number: revenue is what remains after direct costs, and surplus is what remains after the rest of the waterfall, including what is kept for reserves. The protocol sent $29.87 million to Sky Reserves in the quarter, compared with an $8.15 million deficit a year earlier, and closed with $82.40 million in that account against a $150 million solvency target.

Q2 2026 PROTOCOL BOOKS

sUSDS closed June at $5.52 billion, up 149% from $2.22 billion a year earlier, and the Foundation still called it the largest yield-generating stablecoin by issuance. Cumulative Sky Savings Rate payouts crossed $250 million on June 29. The savings rate itself was cut from 3.75% to 3.60% during the quarter, a move the Foundation said was meant to keep reserve building on pace without making the holder rate uncompetitive.

Kendrick’s Friday snapshot, using DeFiLlama, already had sUSDS at about $4.5 billion with a 3.6% annualized yield. That is the same 3.60% rate. It is a smaller stock than the June close.

$0.325 Would Value the Float Near $7.6 Billion

SKY’s circulating supply on the September 10 dashboard print was 23.4 billion tokens, against a hard cap of 23.46 billion. At about $0.06 on Friday that float was worth about $1.4 billion. At $0.325, and with supply unchanged, it would be worth about $7.6 billion.

THE FLOAT BEHIND THE TARGET

• Friday tape: SKY near $0.06, with a 24-hour low of $0.0580.
• Note base: $0.065, the price Standard Chartered used for the fivefold math.
• Staked share: 17.08 billion SKY, or 73.3% of circulating supply, at the end of June.
• Yearly revenue pace: $429.4 million, based on Q2 monthly settlement cycles.

A 73.3% staked share leaves a thin float for anyone who wants to trade the research call. It also means most of the surplus Kendrick is counting, if it arrives, is already spoken for by addresses that have locked coins into the Staking Engine. There is no minimum, no lockup, and no exit fee on that engine, so the share can move.

Spark, Grove and Obex Already Borrowed $5.9 Billion

The federal-bank analogy only works if the commercial-bank layer is actually borrowing. In Q2, Prime Agent vaults held $6.84 billion, about 55% of $12.32 billion in protocol collateral. About $2.58 billion of that was sitting with six named firms.

WHERE $2.58 BILLION SAT AT JUNE 30

• Janus Henderson: $1.24 billion.
• BlackRock BUIDL: $713 million.
• Anchorage: $260 million.
• PayPal: $237 million.
• Securitize: $102 million.
• Galaxy: $27 million.

Protocol collateral itself was $12.32 billion, up 45.5% from $8.47 billion a year earlier, against $12.22 billion of obligations and a $90.26 million surplus on that book. Unique holders across USDS and DAI held roughly steady at 673,811. USDS supply was $10.04 billion at quarter end after a peak above $11.8 billion in early April, so the stablecoin side of the bet was already shrinking before Kendrick published.

Greg Feibus, Sky’s global head of capital markets, treated the note as a description of that agent split rather than as a price call. He wrote that capital goes out at a wholesale rate to allocators in different markets, while the system keeps one capital base and one risk framework, the Sky Atlas.

Earlier today, Geoff Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Asset Research at @StanChart, published his first research report on @SkyEcosystem. IMHO very cool to see another G-SIB who is paying significant attention to this space!

The report describes the specialization of Sky’s agent… pic.twitter.com/bBQZYbMHPe

— Greg Feibus (@gregfeibus) September 11, 2026

That is a capital-markets reading of the same machine Kendrick likened to a central bank. It does not make the $0.325 line any closer. It does explain why a bank desk can model Sky as a spread business at all.

What Happens If Yield-Bearing Dollars Stall?

Kendrick named his failure case in one sentence. “The main risk to this view would be if yield-bearing stablecoin growth is slower than expected.”

The Foundation’s own Q2 print is the high-water mark on that line: sUSDS at $5.52 billion and a fifth consecutive quarter of protocol surplus. The Friday DeFiLlama figure Kendrick used, about $4.5 billion, is lower. USDS had already fallen from above $11.8 billion in early April to $10.04 billion by June 30 after the savings rate was cut. The growth the note needs is not the growth the summer books show.

Some of Kendrick’s other long-range crypto targets have sat well above spot for years, and this one is the same shape: a 2028 number that only pays if a residual claim grows as fast as the core product. A 3.6% savings rate on several billion dollars is a real expense. If Sky keeps that rate competitive to hold sUSDS, less of each new dollar of revenue reaches SKY. If it cuts the rate again to feed reserves and stakers, it can lose the yield-bearing float the forecast depends on.

April was a live test of the other risk, credit. The Foundation said Sky took no losses during the roughly $292 million Kelp DAO rsETH bridge exploit and the Aave collateral squeeze that followed. That is operational history, not a guarantee the next shock is as clean.

Buybacks, Burns and a 23.46 Billion Cap

Sky’s own token guide and Kendrick’s note do not describe the return engine in the same order. Kendrick splits staking rewards from buybacks and says staking is the main line. Sky says those staking rewards funded through open-market buybacks run through the Smart Burn Engine, which spends surplus to buy SKY and then either burns the coins or sends them to stakers. New emissions are off. The cap is 23.46 billion.

HOW SKY GOT TO A CAPPED FLOAT

1. September 18, 2024: SKY and USDS go live as MakerDAO rebrands to Sky. One MKR converts to 24,000 SKY. DAI converts to USDS at 1 for 1.
2. February 2025: The Smart Burn Engine starts buying SKY with protocol surplus.
3. September 2025: A delayed upgrade penalty on leftover MKR begins, rising 1 percentage point every three months.
4. June 4, 2026: The penalty reaches 4%, so a late conversion yields 23,040 SKY per MKR instead of 24,000. MKR can no longer vote.
5. July 23, 2026: Sky Frontier Foundation publishes the Q2 books, including $3.41 million of buybacks that took 51 million SKY at an average $0.067.
6. September 11, 2026: Standard Chartered starts coverage at $0.325 for the end of 2028.

Cumulative buybacks had passed $121 million since February 2025. Q2’s $3.41 million slice is small next to $107.35 million of gross revenue, which is why a desk can call buybacks the lesser line even when staking is paid with those same purchases. Governance still sets the split between burns and staker distributions, and it still sets the savings rate that is paid first.

Sky Reserves closed the second quarter at $82.40 million, $67.60 million short of the $150 million solvency target the protocol set for itself. Until that gap closes, Kendrick’s own first stage says more income stays inside the buffer, and less of it shows up as SKY.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a bank research note and of protocol figures published by Sky Frontier Foundation. It is for information only and is not investment, trading, tax, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, stake, or borrow SKY, USDS, sUSDS, or any other token. Readers should consult a qualified financial adviser who can review their own circumstances before making any decision involving digital assets. Prices, supplies, yields, reserve balances, and research targets are those published by the cited sources on the dates given above and can change with the market and with onchain governance.