Why do cryptocurrency projects always like to change their names?

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 abandon Apple because of a business transformation, and Nike does not start over just because of a downturn in the market.

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

Just yesterday, the on-chain IP ecosystem [Story Protocol](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/The DATA Foundation?k=Nzg4OA== "On-chain IP Ecosystem") announced it would change its name to DATA, with the IP token migrating 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.

Some more extreme projects have changed their names more than once. For example, MAITRIX has previously been known as CENTRAL, X Network, and XLD Finance; BitSafe was formerly known as dlcBTC and DLC.Link; TaleX was previously known as Read2N and Metale Protocol; KGeN was previously known as indiGG and Kratos Gaming Network. The more names change, the less likely most projects are to gain new life from a new name, and instead, they gradually fall into silence.

This raises a question that is rarely discussed seriously in the crypto industry: Why do crypto projects like to change their names?

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

1. Crypto Brand Loyalty is Too Low

Traditional brands fear name changes because user loyalty comes from long-term consumption experiences. A user who has bought iPhones for years, drank Starbucks for years, and worn Nike for years has a perception of the brand that is not formed in a day and will not easily change because of a marketing campaign.

But the user structure of crypto projects is completely different.

Most early users are not traditional consumers but investors, airdrop hunters, liquidity providers, node participants, and narrative traders. They use the product not necessarily because it is good but because there may be airdrops, potential profits, or room for 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 prices remain low for a long time, narratives fail, and ecosystems fall silent, an old name can become a liability.

A name that has experienced a crash, being stuck, hacking attacks, team disputes, or failed roadmaps is hard to rekindle market imagination. It carries not brand equity but scars from price charts and community grievances.

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

2. Renaming is a Marketing Strategy

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

For example, the decentralized social protocol OpenSocial changed its name to Eden after transitioning to AI, and the decentralized electronic signature platform EthSign chose to remove "Eth" from its name after expanding its business. The Ethereum sidechain Matic Network changed its name to Polygon after creating multiple scaling solutions.

When a project's business boundaries fundamentally change, the original brand may limit external perception. Renaming at this time is a necessary strategic adjustment.

Of course, there are also many projects that actively "ride the wave" by incorporating popular concepts into their names to gain more attention. During the last wave of the metaverse craze, Elrond changed its name to MultiversX, directly adding the "Multiverse" element to its name, clearly hoping to ride the narrative of the metaverse and multidimensional digital worlds.

Similarly, as AI, RWA, and Perp became industry hot topics, many projects quickly aligned themselves with new concepts through name changes. For example, Vanilla Finance changed its name to Superp, and Function X changed its name to Pundi AI, reshaping their narratives.

After all, in the crypto industry, narrative itself is part of asset pricing. The closer the name is to the new narrative, the easier it is for exchanges, KOLs, retail investors, and market-making funds to take notice again.

Many projects change their names primarily because the old brand has already hit rock bottom in trust.

In the history of the crypto industry, hacking attacks, contract vulnerabilities, cross-chain bridge thefts, and team turmoil can quickly destroy a project's brand credibility. Once users associate a name with "theft," "explosion," "exit scam," or "poor compensation," continuing to use the old name means carrying ongoing negative public opinion.

Therefore, renaming becomes the most direct public relations tool for project teams, often euphemistically referred to as "brand revitalization."

Anyswap changed its name to Multichain after being hacked, and Alpha Finance changed its name to Stella after losing $37 million, both carrying similar connotations. On the surface, they are adjusting product lines and strategic positioning; but from the market's perception, renaming also serves to some extent the function of "cutting off old memories."

3. The Gray Area of Renaming and Token Swapping

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

Token swapping means that the old token needs to be migrated to a new token, 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 will also conduct token splits alongside this. For example, 1:100 or 1:1000, splitting a higher-priced token into more units, making each token appear cheaper. Projects like SKY and BEAM have adopted similar strategies. Splitting shares does not change the company's value; lower unit prices often attract retail attention more easily.

More critically, after renaming and token swapping, the historical K-line of exchanges is often reset.

For many old coins, the historical burden is heavy. Countless stuck positions, downward trends, negative news, and resistance levels from the past few years are all condensed in the old K-line. After the new coin is launched, it superficially has a brand new chart, with no historical highs to suppress it, no long-term downward shadows, and no intuitive memories of being stuck.

This is extremely beneficial for project teams and market makers. When the old coin migrates to the new coin, 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 allow trading, market-making funds only need relatively little capital to potentially drive up the price of the new coin, creating the market illusion of a "surge after an upgrade."

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

This is the most dangerous aspect of renaming and token swapping: it appears to be a brand upgrade, but in essence, it may be a liquidity reset.

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

FRONT changed its name to [Self Chain](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/Self Chain?k=MTE1MjY= "Intention-Centric Blockchain"), and TVK changed its name to Vanar Chain, are typical cases. They both significantly increased token issuance under the pretext of node rewards and ecological construction, diluting the value of users' holdings.

4. The Real Issue is Not Renaming, but Escaping History

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

Changes in technical routes, expansion of product boundaries, shifts in market hot topics, and legal risk segmentation can all lead to reasonable brand revitalization. Cases like Matic changing its name to Polygon illustrate that a good name can indeed help a project embrace 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 stuck positions, to escape hacking attacks, to escape failed narratives, to escape user doubts, to escape stories that can no longer be told.

This is precisely the biggest 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 only ask what its new name is but should also question three things:

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

If there are real products, real revenues, real users, and clearer strategies behind the renaming, then it may be the beginning of a new phase. But if the renaming is merely accompanied by a token swap, riding the wave, increasing issuance, and clearing K-lines, then it is likely just a beautifully packaged old game.