Author: Yu Gu, ChainCatcher
In the traditional business world, brand equity is the lifeline of a company. Frequently changing a name is almost equivalent to actively destroying the moat.
NVIDIA wouldn't change its name every few years; Apple wouldn't abandon the name "Apple" because of a business pivot; Nike wouldn't tear down its brand and start over due to market downturns.
But in the world of cryptocurrency, the rules are often reversed. According to statistics from RootData, over 16% of crypto projects have changed their names at some point, with many top-tier well-known projects also exhibiting numerous name changes.
Just yesterday, the on-chain IP ecosystem Story Protocol announced a name change to DATA, with IP tokens migrating 1:1 to new DATA tokens. In the past few months, Xion renamed to Verona, Matrixport renamed to BIT, and the TON token symbol changed to GRAM. Earlier, a batch of well-known projects like Klaytn, EOS, Fantom, MakerDAO, Elrond, and Matic Network also changed their names.
Some more extreme projects have even changed their names multiple times. For instance, MAITRIX had former names including CENTRAL, X Network, XLD Finance; BitSafe was formerly known as dlcBTC and DLC.Link; TaleX had former names Read2N and Metale Protocol; KGeN was formerly indiGG and Kratos Gaming Network. While names changed more and more, most projects didn't gain new life with the new name, but instead gradually faded into obscurity.
This leads to a question rarely seriously discussed in the crypto industry: Why do crypto projects always love changing names?
The answer might not be complicated: Because in the crypto industry, the brand is not the most important asset; attention, narrative, token price, and liquidity are.
I. 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, or worn Nike for years forms a perception of the brand over time that doesn't change easily due to a single marketing campaign.
But the user structure of crypto projects is completely different.
Most early users are not consumers in the traditional sense, but investors, airdrop hunters, liquidity providers, node participants, and narrative traders. They use the product not necessarily because it's good, but because there might be an airdrop, potential earnings, or upside potential.
This means that brand loyalty for crypto projects is inherently weak.
In traditional industries, users ask, "Is this brand trustworthy?"; in the crypto industry, users more often ask, "Can this coin still go up?". As long as the price is chronically low, the narrative fails, and the ecosystem stagnates, the old name becomes a liability instead of an asset.
A name associated with a crash, being trapped in investments, hacking attacks, team controversies, or failed roadmaps struggles to inspire market imagination. It carries not brand equity, but the scars of a price chart and community grievances.
This is the fundamental reason why crypto projects dare to frequently change names: in many cases, the old name has no moat, only historical baggage.
II. Renaming as a Marketing Strategy
Not all name changes should simply be seen as "putting on a new shell." Some projects change names because the original name cannot accommodate the new strategic scope. As market hot concepts evolve, if the name includes outdated concepts like "Social" or "DAO," or if the name's meaning doesn't fit, a name change is an inevitable choice.
For example, the decentralized social protocol OpenSocial renamed to Eden after transitioning to AI; the decentralized e-signature platform EthSign chose to remove "Eth" from its name after business expansion; the Ethereum sidechain Matic Network renamed to Polygon (meaning polygon) after developing multiple scaling solutions.
When the project's business boundaries fundamentally change, the original brand may limit external perception. Renaming is a necessary strategic calibration at this point.
Of course, there are also many projects actively "jumping on the bandwagon." Adding hot concepts to a name can attract more attention. In the last metaverse craze, Elrond renamed to MultiversX, directly incorporating the "Multiverse" element, clearly hoping to ride the metaverse and multi-dimensional digital world narrative.
Similarly, as AI, RWA, and Perps become industry hotspots, many projects rename to quickly align with new concepts. For example, Vanilla Finance renamed to Superp, Function X renamed to Pundi AI, reshaping their own 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 to be noticed again by exchanges, KOLs, retail investors, and market makers.
For many projects, the core reason for changing names is that the old brand has fallen into a deep trust deficit.
In crypto industry history, hacking attacks, contract vulnerabilities, cross-chain bridge thefts, team scandals can quickly destroy a project's brand credibility. Once users associate a name with "hacked," "crashed," "rug pull," or "poor compensation," continuing to use the old name means continuously bearing negative sentiment.
Therefore, renaming becomes the most direct PR tool for project teams, often euphemistically called "rebranding."
Anyswap renamed to Multichain after a hack; Alpha Finance renamed to Stella after a $37 million hack; both carry a similar undertone. On the surface, they are adjusting product lines and strategic positioning; but from a market perception standpoint, the name change also serves the function of "cutting off old memories" to some degree.
III. The Gray Space of Renaming and Token Swaps
If it were just a name change, the impact would be limited. What truly warrants vigilance is that many crypto projects often accompany name changes with token swaps.
A token swap means old tokens need to be migrated to new tokens; exchanges issue announcements; deposits and withdrawals are suspended; old trading pairs are delisted; new trading pairs are listed. For project teams, this is a rare opportunity for a secondary listing.
Many projects also perform token splits. For example, 1:100, 1:1000, splitting originally higher-priced tokens into more units, making each token appear cheaper. Projects like SKY and BEAM have adopted similar strategies. A stock split doesn't change company value, but lower unit prices often attract more attention from retail investors.
More critically, after renaming and token swapping, historical price charts on exchanges are often reset.
For many old tokens, the historical baggage is extremely heavy. Years of trapped investors, downtrends, negative news, and resistance levels are all frozen in the old price charts. After the new token launches, it ostensibly has a brand-new chart, free from historical highs, long-term downtrend shadows, and less vivid memories of being trapped.
This is highly advantageous for the project team and market makers. When old tokens migrate to new ones, many exchanges suspend deposits and withdrawals. At this point, the actual circulating supply in the secondary market may become very thin. On the few platforms allowing trading, market makers only need relatively little capital to potentially pump the new token's price, creating the market illusion of a "post-upgrade surge."
Subsequently, the project team, early participants, or market makers may take advantage of restored liquidity and user FOMO to unload holdings.
This is the most dangerous aspect of renaming and token swaps: On the surface, it's a brand upgrade; in essence, it could be a liquidity reset.
Furthermore, many projects redesign tokenomics during the token swap process. Ordinary users see a 1:1 migration and think their rights aren't harmed. But the project team might simultaneously add new validator rewards, ecosystem funds, team incentives, node subsidies, and strategic reserves, thereby creating a large number of new tokens out of thin air.
FRONT renaming to Self Chain and TVK renaming to Vanar Chain are classic cases. They both significantly increased token supply under the guise of node rewards, ecosystem building, etc., diluting user holdings' value.
IV. The Real Problem Isn't Renaming, It's Escaping History
Of course, crypto projects can change their names; that's not a serious issue in itself.
Changes in technical roadmap, expansion of product boundaries, shifts in market hotspots, or mitigating legal risks can all lead to reasonable rebranding. Cases like Matic renaming to Polygon show that a good name can indeed help a project accommodate a larger strategic scope.
But in more cases, crypto project name changes are not about building brand equity, but about fleeing from it.
Fleeing the old price chart, fleeing trapped investors, fleeing hacking attacks, fleeing failed narratives, fleeing user skepticism, fleeing a story that can no longer be sold.
This is perhaps 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 shouldn't only ask what its new name is, but should question three things:
What actual capabilities or strategy has it truly added? Has its tokenomics changed? What old history does it most want users to forget?
If behind the name change lies real products, real revenue, real users, and a clearer strategy, then it might be the start of a new phase. But if the name change is accompanied by token swaps, bandwagoning, supply increases, and chart resetting, then it's most likely just a repackaged version of an old game.
