Why do crypto projects always like to change their names?

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

In the traditional business world, brand equity is a company's lifeline. Frequent name changes almost equate to actively destroying a moat.

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

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

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, a number of well-known projects such as Klaytn, EOS, Fantom, MakerDAO, Elrond, and Matic Network also changed their names.

More extreme projects have changed their names more than once. For example, MAITRIX previously used names including CENTRAL, X Network, and XLD Finance; BitSafe previously used dlcBTC and DLC.Link; TaleX previously used Read2N and Metale Protocol; KGeN previously used indiGG and Kratos Gaming Network. The more names changed, the more most projects did not gain new life from the new names, but instead gradually fell into silence.

This brings up a question rarely seriously discussed in the crypto industry: Why do crypto projects always like to change their names?

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

1. Crypto brand loyalty is too low

The reason traditional brands fear name changes is that user loyalty comes from long-term consumption experience. A user who has bought iPhones for years, drunk Starbucks for years, and worn Nike for years has a brand perception that is not formed in a day and will not change easily due to a marketing campaign.

But the user structure of crypto projects is completely different.

Most early users are not traditional consumers, but rather investors, airdrop hunters, liquidity providers, node participants, and narrative traders. They use products not necessarily because the products are good, but because there might be an airdrop, potential returns, or upside.

This means that user loyalty to crypto brands is naturally 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 low for a long time, narratives fail, and ecosystems stagnate, old names become negative assets.

A name that has experienced a crash, bag holding, hacker attacks, team controversies, or failed roadmaps struggles to spark 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 changes are a marketing strategy

Not all name changes should be simply seen as "re-branding." Some projects change their names because the old name can no longer accommodate the new strategic scope. As hot market concepts shift, if the name includes outdated concepts like "Social" or "DAO," or if the name's meaning no longer fits, a name change becomes inevitable.

For example, the decentralized social protocol OpenSocial changed its name to Eden after pivoting to AI; the decentralized e-signature platform EthSign removed "Eth" from its name after business expansion; the Ethereum sidechain Matic Network changed its name 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 "jump on trends" by adding hot concepts to their names to gain more attention. During the last metaverse craze, Elrond changed its name to MultiversX, directly incorporating the "Multiverse" element, clearly hoping to ride 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 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 a new narrative, the easier it is to regain attention from exchanges, KOLs, retail investors, and market-making funds.

There are also many projects where the core reason for a name change is that the old brand has fallen into a trust abyss.

Historically in the crypto industry, hacker attacks, contract vulnerabilities, cross-chain bridge theft, and team scandals can quickly destroy a project's brand credibility. Once users associate a name with "hacked," "rug pull," "exit scam," or "inadequate compensation," continuing to use the old name means perpetually bearing negative public opinion.

Therefore, name changes become the most direct PR tool for project teams, euphemistically called "brand reshapes."

Anyswap changed its name to Multichain after being hacked, and Alpha Finance changed its name to Stella after losing $37 million in a hack—both have similar undertones. On the surface, they are adjusting product lines and strategic positioning; but from a market perception perspective, name changes also serve to "cut ties with old memories."

3. The gray space of name changes and token swaps

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

A token swap means old tokens need to migrate 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 second listing opportunity.

Many projects also take the opportunity to do token splits. For example, 1:100 or 1:1000, splitting a token with a higher price into more units to make each token appear cheaper. Projects like SKY and BEAM have used similar approaches. Stock splits themselves do not change company value, but lower unit prices often attract retail attention.

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

For many old coins, the historical baggage is extremely heavy. Years of trapped positions, downward trends, negative news, and resistance levels are all crystallized in the old K-line chart. After the new coin launches, it appears with a completely fresh chart—no historical highs to suppress, no long-term decline shadows, and no intuitive memory of being trapped.

This is extremely advantageous for project teams and market makers. When old coins migrate to new coins, many exchanges suspend deposits and withdrawals. At this time, the actual circulating supply on the secondary market can become very light. On a few exchanges that remain open for trading, market-making funds may only need relatively small capital to push up the new coin's price, creating a market illusion of "post-upgrade surge."

Subsequently, the project team, early participants, or market-making funds may take advantage of restored liquidity and retail investors chasing highs to offload.

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 token swap process. Regular users see a 1:1 migration and think their equity is not damaged. But the project team may simultaneously add validator rewards, ecosystem funds, team incentives, node subsidies, and strategic reserves, thereby creating large amounts of new tokens out of thin air.

FRONT changing to Self Chain and TVK changing to Vanar Chain are classic examples. They significantly inflated their token supply under the guise of node rewards, ecosystem building, etc., 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 mitigation can all lead to reasonable brand reshapes. Cases like Matic changing to Polygon show that a good name can indeed help a project embrace a larger strategic space.

But in more cases, crypto project name changes are not for building a brand, but for escaping the brand.

Escaping old K-lines, escaping trapped positions, escaping hacker attacks, escaping failed narratives, escaping user doubts, escaping 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 users remembering too much.

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

What real new capabilities or strategies has it actually added? Have 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 merely accompanied by a token swap, trend hopping, inflation, and K-line clearing, then it is most likely just a beautifully packaged old game.