Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

In the traditional business world, brand equity is the lifeline of a company. Frequent name changes are almost equivalent to actively destroying the moat.

NVIDIA does not change its name every few years, Apple does not give up on Apple due to a business transformation, and Nike will not start over because of a downturn in the market cycle.

However, in the cryptocurrency world, the rules are often reversed. According to statistics from RootData, over 16% of crypto projects have changed their names, and many well-known first-tier projects also exhibit a significant number of name changes.

Just yesterday, the on-chain IP ecosystem Story Protocol announced its name change to DATA, and the IP token will be migrated to the new DATA token at a 1:1 ratio. In the past few months, Xion changed its name to Verona, Matrixport changed its name to BIT, and the TON token symbol changed to GRAM. Earlier, a number of well-known projects such as Klaytn, EOS, Fantom, MakerDAO, Elrond, and Matic Network have also changed their names.

More extreme projects have changed their names more than once. For instance, MAITRIX has had names such as CENTRAL, X Network, and XLD Finance; BitSafe was previously known as dlcBTC and DLC.Link; TaleX was formerly called Read2N and Metale Protocol; and KGeN was formerly known as indiGG and Kratos Gaming Network. The more names they change, the more unlikely many projects are to gain new life from a new name, instead gradually falling into silence.

This raises a rarely discussed question in the crypto industry: Why do crypto projects love to change their names?

The answer may not be complex: because in the crypto industry, the brand is not the most important asset; attention, narrative, token price, and liquidity are.

1. The Loyalty to Crypto Brands is Too Low

Traditional brands fear name changes because user loyalty comes from long-term consumption experiences. A user who has bought iPhones for many years, drank Starbucks for many years, and worn Nike for many years has developed their perception of the brand over a long time and is not easily swayed by a marketing campaign.

However, the user structure of crypto projects is completely different.

Most early users are not traditional consumers; rather, they are investors, airdrop hunters, liquidity providers, node participants, and narrative traders. They use the product not necessarily because it is good, but because it may bring airdrops, possible profits, or potential price increases.

This means that user loyalty to crypto brands is inherently weak.

In traditional industries, users ask “Is this brand trustworthy?”; in the crypto industry, users more often ask “Can this coin still rise?”. As long as the price remains low for an extended period, the narrative fails, and the ecosystem is silent, an old name can become a negative asset.

A name that has experienced a crash, has been trapped, been hacked, has team disputes, or has failed its roadmap finds it difficult to spark market imagination again. It carries not brand equity but scars of K-lines and resentment from the community.

This is also the fundamental reason why crypto projects dare to frequently change their names: in many cases, the old name has no moat, only historical burdens.

2. Renaming as a Marketing Strategy

Not all name changes should be simply viewed as “changing skins”. Some projects change their names because the original name cannot accommodate the new strategic scope. As market hot concepts change, if the name includes outdated concepts like “Social” or “DAO”, or if the name’s meaning does not fit, a name change becomes a necessary choice.

For instance, the decentralized social protocol OpenSocial changed its name to Eden after shifting to AI, and the decentralized e-signature platform EthSign chose to drop “Eth” from its name as it expanded its business. Ethereum sidechain Matic Network was renamed Polygon, meaning polygon, after developing multiple scaling solutions.

When there is a fundamental change in a project’s business boundaries, the original brand may limit external perceptions. In such cases, renaming is a necessary strategic adjustment.

Of course, there are also many projects that actively "hitch a ride on the trend". By including popular concepts in their names, they can attract more attention. During the last wave of the metaverse craze, Elrond changed its name to MultiversX, directly incorporating the “Multiverse” element into its name, clearly hoping to ride the narrative of the metaverse and multidimensional digital worlds.

Similarly, with AI, RWA, and Perp becoming industry hotspots, many projects quickly adapt to new concepts by changing their names. For example, Vanilla Finance changed its name to Superp, and Function X changed its name to Pundi AI, redefining their narratives.

After all, in the crypto industry, narrative itself is part of asset pricing. The closer a name is to a new narrative, the more likely it is to attract renewed attention from exchanges, KOLs, retail investors, and market-making funds.

There are many projects where the core reason for a name change is that the old brand has fallen to the bottom of trust.

In the history of the crypto industry, hacker attacks, contract vulnerabilities, cross-chain bridge thefts, and team turmoil can quickly destroy a project's brand credit. Once users associate a name with “theft”, “collapse”, “running away”, or “inadequate compensation”, continuing to use the old name means continuing to bear negative public opinion.

Thus, renaming becomes the most direct public relations tool for the project team, often glorified as “brand rejuvenation”.

Anyswap changed its name to Multichain after being hacked, while Alpha Finance renamed itself Stella after losing $37 million, both having similar overtones. On the surface, they are adjusting product lines and strategic positioning; but from the market's perception, renaming also somewhat serves the function of “cutting old memories”.

3. The Gray Area of Name and Token Changes

If it is just a name change, the impact is actually limited. What is truly concerning is that many crypto projects often accompany name changes with token changes.

A token change means the old token needs to be migrated to a new one, exchanges will issue announcements, deposits and withdrawals will be suspended, old trading pairs will be delisted, and new trading pairs will be launched. For project teams, this is a rare opportunity for a secondary listing.

Many projects also undertake token splits. For instance, a 1:100 or 1:1000 split divides originally higher-priced tokens into more units, making each token appear cheaper. Projects like SKY and BEAM have adopted similar approaches. Splitting shares does not change the company's value, and lower prices often attract more retail attention.

More critically, after a name and token change, the historical K-lines of the exchanges are often reset.

For many old tokens, the historical burdens are significant. Countless trapped positions, downtrends, negative news, and resistance levels from the past few years are all condensed in the old K-lines. With the new token launched, it superficially has a completely new chart, no historical highs suppressing it, no long-term downtrends casting shadows, and no intuitive memories of being trapped.

This is extremely beneficial for project teams and market makers. When old tokens migrate to new tokens, many exchanges will suspend deposits and withdrawals. At this time, the actual circulating supply in the secondary market may become very light. On a few platforms that open trading, market-making funds only need relatively small amounts of capital to potentially drive up the price of the new tokens, creating the market illusion of a “surge after an upgrade”.

Subsequently, project teams, early participants, or market-making funds may complete their exits by leveraging liquidity recovery and user chasing.

This is the most dangerous aspect of renaming and changing tokens: on the surface, it appears to be a brand upgrade; in essence, it may just be a liquidity reset.

Furthermore, many projects will also redesign their token economics during the token change process. Ordinary users see a 1:1 migration and believe their rights have not been harmed. However, the project team may simultaneously add validator rewards, ecological funds, team incentives, node subsidies, and strategic reserves, thereby creating a large number of new tokens out of thin air.

FRONT changing its name to Self Chain and TVK changing its name to Vanar Chain are typical cases. Both significantly increased their token issuance citing node rewards and ecological construction as reasons, leading to the dilution of users' asset value.

4. The Real Problem is Not Renaming, but Avoiding History

Crypto projects can certainly change their names, and this is not a serious issue.

Changes in technology routes, expansion of product boundaries, shifts in market hotspots, and legal risk mitigations can all justify reasonable brand revitalization. The case of Matic changing to Polygon shows that a good name can indeed help a project encompass a larger strategic space.

However, in many cases, the renaming of crypto projects is not to solidify the brand, but to escape from it.

To escape old K-lines, to escape trapped positions, to escape hacker attacks, to escape failed narratives, to escape user doubts, to escape stories that can no longer be told.

This is the largest difference between the crypto industry and the traditional business world: traditional companies fear losing brand memory while many crypto projects fear users remembering too much.

Therefore, when a project announces a name change, the market should not just ask what the new name is, but should probe three questions:

What real capabilities or strategies has it added? Has its token economics changed? What old history does it most want users to forget?

If behind the renaming are real products, real revenue, real users, and a clearer strategy, then it may signal the start of a new phase. But if the renaming is only accompanied by a token change, hitching a ride on trends, massive issuance, and cleaning K-lines, then it is likely just a beautifully packaged old game.

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