Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher
Why do crypto projects always like to change their names?
In the traditional business world, brand equity is the lifeblood of a company. Frequently changing names is almost equivalent to actively destroying your moat.
NVIDIA won’t change its name every few years, Apple won’t abandon the Apple brand due to a business transformation, and Nike won’t completely overhaul its brand because of a market downturn.
But in the cryptocurrency world, the rules are often reversed. According to RootData, more than 16% of crypto projects have changed their names, and many top-tier, well-known projects have experienced significant renaming.
Yesterday, the on-chain IP ecosystem Story Protocol announced it is rebranding to DATA, with IP tokens migrating 1:1 to the new DATA token. In the preceding months, Xion rebranded to Verona, Matrixport to BIT, and the TON token symbol was changed to GRAM. Earlier still, several prominent projects including Klaytn, EOS, Fantom, MakerDAO, Elrond, and Matic Network underwent name changes.
Some projects have changed their names more than once. For example, MAITRIX was previously known as CENTRAL, X Network, and XLD Finance; BitSafe was formerly called dlcBTC and DLC.Link; TaleX was previously known as Read2N and Metale Protocol; KGeN was formerly known as indiGG and Kratos Gaming Network. The more names they change to, the more these projects tend to fade into obscurity rather than gaining new life.
This raises 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: in the crypto industry, brand is not the most important asset—attention, narrative, token price, and liquidity are.
One, cryptocurrency brand loyalty is too low.
Traditional brands fear rebranding because user loyalty stems from long-term consumption experiences. A user who has bought iPhones for years, drunk Starbucks for years, and worn Nike for years did not form their perception of the brand in a day, nor will it 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 rather investors, airdrop hunters, liquidity providers, node participants, and narrative traders. They use the product not necessarily because it is user-friendly, but because it may offer airdrops, potential returns, or upside appreciation.
This means that user loyalty for crypto brands is inherently weaker.
In traditional industries, users ask, “Is this brand trustworthy?”; in the crypto industry, users more often ask, “Will this coin go up again?” When the price remains low for a long time, the narrative falls apart, and the ecosystem grows silent, even an established name can become a liability.
A name that has endured a crash, being trapped, a hack, team controversy, or a failed roadmap struggles to inspire market imagination. It carries not brand equity, but K-line scars and community resentment.
This is also the fundamental reason why crypto projects dare to change their names frequently: in many cases, the old name has no moat, only historical baggage.
Two: Renaming is a marketing strategy
Not all rebranding should be simply viewed as “putting on a new face.” Some projects change their names because the original name can no longer reflect their expanded strategic scope; as market trends evolve, if a name includes outdated concepts like “Social” or “DAO,” or if its meaning no longer aligns with the project’s direction, rebranding becomes a necessary choice.
For example, the decentralized social protocol OpenSocial renamed itself Eden after transitioning to AI; the decentralized e-signature platform EthSign removed “Eth” from its name after expanding its services; and the Ethereum sidechain Matic Network, after developing multiple scaling solutions, rebranded as Polygon (meaning polygon).
When a project's business scope undergoes fundamental changes, the original brand may limit external perception. Rebranding at this stage is a necessary strategic alignment.
Of course, many projects have actively jumped on trends by incorporating popular concepts into their names to gain more attention. During the previous metaverse boom, Elrond rebranded as MultiversX, directly embedding the “Multiverse” element into its name to align with narratives around the metaverse and multidimensional digital worlds.
Similarly, as AI, RWA, and Perp become industry hot topics, many projects quickly rebrand to align with these new concepts—for example, Vanilla Finance changed its name to Superp, and Function X became Pundi AI, reshaping their narratives.
After all, in the crypto industry, narratives are part of asset pricing—the closer a name is to a new narrative, the more likely it is to be rediscovered by exchanges, KOLs, retail investors, and market-making capital.
Many projects have rebranded because their old brand had fallen into a bottom of distrust.
Throughout the history of the crypto industry, hacks, contract vulnerabilities, stolen cross-chain bridges, and team scandals can rapidly destroy a project’s brand credibility. Once users associate a name with “stolen,” “collapsed,” “ran away,” or “inadequate compensation,” continuing to use the old name means enduring ongoing negative publicity.
Therefore, renaming has become the most direct PR tool for project teams, euphemistically called "brand repositioning."
After being hacked, AnySwap rebranded as Multichain, and Alpha Finance, after a $37 million theft, rebranded as Stella—both carrying similar undertones. On the surface, they appear to be refining their product lines and strategic positioning; but from a market perception standpoint, the rebranding also serves to some extent as a way to sever ties with past memories.
III. The Gray Area of Renaming Coins
Changing just the name has limited impact. What’s truly concerning is that many crypto projects change their names alongside a token swap.
Token swapping means that the old tokens must be migrated to new ones; the exchange will issue an announcement, trading and deposits/withdrawals will be suspended, the old trading pairs will be delisted, and new trading pairs will be listed. For the project team, this represents a rare opportunity for a secondary listing.
Many projects also perform token splits, such as 1:100 or 1:1000, dividing higher-priced tokens into a larger number of smaller units to make each individual token appear cheaper. Projects like SKY and BEAM have used similar approaches. Splitting tokens does not change the underlying value of the project, but the lower price per token often attracts more retail investors.
More importantly, after renaming or replacing the coin, the exchange's historical K-lines are often reset to zero.
For many older coins, the historical baggage is immense. Years of locked positions, downward trends, negative news, and resistance levels are all embedded in the old K-lines. After a new coin launches, it appears to have a clean chart—no historical highs to weigh it down, no long-term downtrend shadows, and no immediate memory of being trapped.
This is extremely advantageous for project teams and market makers. When old tokens are migrated to new ones, many exchanges suspend deposits and withdrawals. At this time, the actual circulating supply in the secondary market may become very thin. On the few platforms where trading remains open, market makers can push the price of the new token significantly higher with relatively little capital, creating a market illusion of a “massive surge after upgrade.”
Subsequently, the project team, early participants, or market-making funds may exit their positions as liquidity recovers and users chase higher prices.
This is the most dangerous aspect of renaming and replacing coins: what appears to be a brand upgrade may actually be a liquidity reset.
Furthermore, many projects redesign their tokenomics during the token swap. Ordinary users see a 1:1 migration and assume their holdings are unaffected, but the project team may simultaneously introduce 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 rebranded to Self Chain, and TVK rebranded to Vanar Chain—both are prime examples of projects that significantly increased token supply under the guise of node rewards and ecosystem development, diluting the value of users' holdings.
Four: The real issue is not the name change, but escaping history
Cryptocurrency projects can certainly change their names; this is not a serious issue.
Changes in technology roadmap, expansion of product boundaries, shifts in market trends, and legal risk separation can all justify a legitimate brand repositioning. Cases like Matic’s rebranding to Polygon demonstrate that a strong name can indeed help a project embrace a broader strategic scope.
But in most cases, rebranding a crypto project is not about building brand equity, but about escaping it.
Escape the old candlesticks, escape the trapped positions, escape the hacks, escape the failed narratives, escape user skepticism, escape stories that no longer resonate.
This is precisely the biggest difference between the crypto industry and the traditional business world: traditional companies fear losing brand recall, while many crypto projects fear users remember too much.
Therefore, when a project announces a name change, the market shouldn’t just ask what its new name is—it should ask three follow-up questions:
What real capabilities or strategies has it truly added? Has its tokenomics changed? What old history is it most eager for users to forget?
If the rebranding is backed by a real product, real revenue, real users, and a clearer strategy, then it may mark the beginning of a new phase. But if the rebranding is merely accompanied by token swaps, chasing trends, token dumps, and clearing K-lines, then it’s likely just a beautifully packaged version of the old game.
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