Why do crypto projects frequently change their names?

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Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

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

Nvidia doesn't change its name every few years, Apple won't abandon Apple because of a business transformation, and Nike won't scrap its brand due to a market downturn.

But in the cryptocurrency world, the rules are often reversed. According to RootData statistics, over 16% of crypto projects have changed their names, and many top-tier projects also have a high incidence of renaming.

Just yesterday, the on-chain IP ecosystem Story Protocol announced a rebrand to DATA, with the IP token migrating 1:1 to the new DATA token. In the past few months, Xion rebranded to Verona, Matrixport rebranded to BIT, and the TON token symbol changed to GRAM. Earlier than that, a batch of well-known projects including Klaytn, EOS, Fantom, MakerDAO, Elrond, and Matic Network have changed their names.

Even more extreme projects have changed names more than once. For example, MAITRIX has previously used names including CENTRAL, X Network, XLD Finance; BitSafe was previously known as dlcBTC, DLC.Link; TaleX was previously known as Read2N, Metale Protocol; KGeN was previously known as indiGG, Kratos Gaming Network. The names change more and more, but most projects have not gained new life from the new names; instead, they have gradually fallen into silence.

This leads to a question rarely seriously discussed in the crypto industry: Why do crypto projects always like to change 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 are afraid of changing names because user loyalty comes from long-term consumption experience. A user who has bought an iPhone for years, drunk Starbucks for years, worn Nike for years—their perception of the brand is not formed in a day, nor will it be easily changed by 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 is good, but because there might be an airdrop, potential returns, or upside.

This means that the user loyalty of 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 go up?" As long as prices are depressed for a long time, the narrative fails, and the ecosystem stagnates, the old name becomes a liability instead.

A name that has experienced crashes, being trapped, hacks, team controversies, or failed roadmaps can hardly inspire market imagination. It carries not brand equity, but K-line scars and community resentment.

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

2. Name change is a marketing strategy

Not all name changes should be simply regarded as "changing shells." Some projects change names because the original name can no longer 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 is not aligned, a name change is inevitable.

For example, the decentralized social protocol OpenSocial rebranded to Eden after transitioning to AI; the decentralized e-signature platform EthSign chose to remove "Eth" from its name after business expansion; Ethereum sidechain Matic Network rebranded to Polygon (meaning "polygon") after building multiple scaling solutions.

When a project's business boundaries fundamentally change, the original brand may limit external perception. A name change at this point is a necessary strategic calibration.

Of course, there are also many projects that actively "ride the trend" by attaching popular concepts to their names to gain more attention. In the last cycle of metaverse hype, Elrond rebranded to MultiversX, directly incorporating the "Multiverse" element, clearly aiming to capitalize on the metaverse and multi-dimensional digital world narrative.

Similarly, when AI, RWA, and Perp became industry hotspots, many projects quickly rebranded to align with new concepts. For example, Vanilla Finance rebranded to Superp, Function X rebranded 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 a new narrative, the easier it is for exchanges, KOLs, retail investors, and market-making capital to take notice again.

There are also many projects whose core reason for changing names is that the old brand has fallen into a trust bottom.

In the history of the crypto industry, hacks, contract vulnerabilities, cross-chain bridge exploits, and team scandals can quickly destroy a project's brand credibility. Once users associate a name with "hacked," "blown up," "exit scam," or "inadequate compensation," continuing to use the old name means constantly bearing negative public opinion.

Therefore, name changes become the most direct PR tool for project teams, even glorified as "brand revitalization."

Anyswap rebranded to Multichain after being hacked, and Alpha Finance rebranded to Stella after losing $37 million in a hack—both carry similar undertones. On the surface, they are adjusting product lines and strategic positioning; but from market perception, the name change also serves to "cut off old memories" to some extent.

3. The gray area of name changes and token swaps

If it's just a name change, the impact is actually limited. What is truly concerning 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 will issue announcements, deposits and withdrawals will be suspended, old trading pairs will be delisted, and new trading pairs will be listed. For the project team, this is a rare opportunity for a secondary listing.

Many projects also take the opportunity to do token splits. For example, 1:100, 1:1000, splitting a token that was originally priced higher into more units, making each token look cheaper. Projects like SKY and BEAM have adopted similar approaches. Stock splits themselves do not change company value, but a lower unit price often attracts retail investors more easily.

More critically, after a name change and token swap, the historical K-line on exchanges is often cleared.

For many old coins, the historical baggage is extremely heavy. Years of trapped positions, downward trends, negative news, and resistance levels are all condensed in the old K-line. When a new coin lists, it seemingly has a brand new chart, with no historical highs suppressing it, no long-term decline shadows, and less intuitive memory of being trapped.

This is extremely advantageous for the project team and market makers. When old coins migrate to new coins, many exchanges suspend deposits and withdrawals. At this point, the actual circulating supply in the secondary market may become very light. On a few platforms where trading remains open, market makers only need relatively small capital to pump the new coin price, creating the market illusion of a "post-upgrade surge."

Subsequently, the project team, early participants, or market-making capital can take advantage of restored liquidity and retail FOMO to distribute.

This is the most dangerous aspect of name changes and token swaps: On the surface, it is a brand upgrade, but in essence, it may be a liquidity reset.

Going further, many projects also redesign tokenomics during the swap process. Ordinary users see a 1:1 migration and think their rights are not harmed. But the project team may simultaneously add validator rewards, ecosystem funds, team incentives, node subsidies, and strategic reserves, thereby creating a large number of new tokens out of thin air.

FRONT rebranding to Self Chain and TVK rebranding to Vanar Chain are typical examples. They significantly inflated token supply under the pretext of node rewards and ecosystem building, diluting the value of user holdings.

4. The real problem is not name changes, but escaping history

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

Changes in technical direction, expansion of product boundaries, shifts in market hotspots, and legal risk cutting can all lead to reasonable brand revitalization. Cases like Matic rebranding to Polygon show that a good name can indeed help a project take on a larger strategic space.

But in most cases, crypto projects change names not to build up the brand, but to escape it.

Escape the old K-line, escape trapped positions, escape hacks, escape failed narratives, escape user doubts, escape stories that can no longer be told.

This is the biggest difference between the crypto industry and the traditional business world: Traditional companies fear losing brand memory, while many crypto projects fear that users remember too much.

So, when a project announces a name change, the market should not only ask what its new name is, but should also probe three questions:

What real capability or strategy has it actually added? Has its tokenomics changed? What old history does it most want users to forget?

If the name change is backed by 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 only accompanied by a token swap, trend-chasing, inflation, and K-line clearing, then it is most likely just a beautifully packaged old game.