Crypto projects' flee 'their old names in bulk: the liquidity reset game behind brand upgrades
Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher
Original title: Why do crypto projects always like to change their names?
In the traditional business world, brand assets are the lifeblood of an enterprise. Frequent name changes are almost tantamount to actively destroying a moat.
Nvidia won't change its name every few years, Apple won't give up on Apple because of some kind of business transformation, and Nike won't overthrow the brand because of a sluggish market cycle.
But in the cryptocurrency world, the rules are often the opposite. According to RootData statistics, more than 16% of encryption projects have changed their names, and many well-known first-line projects have also changed their names in large numbers.
Just yesterday, the on-chain IP ecosystemStory ProtocolIt was announced that the name will be changed to DATA, and the IP token will migrate to the new DATA token on a 1:1 basis. Within a few months, Xion changed its nameVerona, Matrixport was renamedBIT, the TON token symbol was changed to GRAM. Earlier,Klaytn、EOS、Fantom、MakerDAO、Elrond、Matic NetworkWait for a number of well-known projects to change their names.
More extreme projects have even changed their names more than once. For exampleMAITRIXFormer names include CENTRAL, X Network, and XLD Finance; BitSafe used names dlcBTC and DLC.Link;TaleXFormerly used the names Read2N and Metale Protocol;KGenUsed names like IndiGG and Kratos Gaming Network. The names have changed more and more, but most projects have not gained new life due to the new name; instead, they have gradually fallen silent.
This brings up a question that is rarely seriously discussed in the crypto industry: Why do crypto projects always like to change their names?
The answer is probably not complicated: because in the crypto industry, brands aren't the most important assets; attention, narrative, token prices, and liquidity are.
1. Crypto brand loyalty is too low
Traditional brands are afraid to change their names because user loyalty comes from long-term consumer experiences. A user has bought an iPhone for many years, drank Starbucks for many years, and worn Nike for many years. His perception of the brand was not formed in a day, nor did it change easily due to a certain marketing campaign.
But cryptographic projects have a completely different user structure.
Most early users aren't consumers in the traditional sense, but investors, airdrop hunters, liquidity providers, node participants, and narrative traders. They use products not necessarily because they are easy to use, but because they may have air investment, may be profitable, and may have room for growth.
This means that crypto brands are naturally less loyal to users.
In the traditional industry, users ask “Is this brand worth trusting”; in the crypto industry, users are more often asked “can this coin still rise?” As long as prices are sluggish for a long time, the narrative fails, and the ecology is silent, the old name will instead become a negative asset.
A name that has experienced a crash, duvet cover, hacking, team controversy, or route failure can hardly inspire the market's imagination. It doesn't carry brand assets, but K-line scars and community grievances.
This is also the root reason why crypto projects dare to change their names frequently: in many cases, old names have no moats, only historical baggage.
2. Renaming is a marketing strategy
Not every name change should simply be viewed as a “vest change.” The name change of some projects is indeed because the original name cannot carry the new strategic scope. As hot market concepts change, if the name includes old concepts such as “Social” and “DAO,” or if the meaning of the name does not match, changing the name is an inevitable choice.
For example, the decentralized social networking protocol OpenSocial changed its name to Eden after transforming AI, the decentralized electronic signature platform EthSign chose to remove “Eth” from its name after expanding its business, and the Ethereum sidechain Matic Network changed its name to Polygon (meaning polygon) after building multiple scaling solutions.
When the project's business boundaries fundamentally change, the original brand may limit external perception. The name change is a necessary strategic calibration at this point.
Of course, there are also quite a few projects that actively “grab hot spots”, and you can get more attention by naming popular concepts. In the last metaverse boom, Elrond changed its name to MultiversX and directly added “Multiverse” elements to the name, apparently hoping to build on the metaverse and multi-dimensional digital world narratives.
Similarly, AI, RWA, and Perp have become hot spots in the industry, and many projects will quickly get close to new concepts through name changes. For example, Vanilla Finance changed its name to Superp, and Function X changed its name to Pundi AI, reshaping its own narrative.
After all, in the crypto industry, the narrative itself is part of asset pricing. The closer the name is to the new narrative, the easier it is to be re-noticed by exchanges, KOLs, retail investors, and market makers.
There are also many projects. The core reason for the name change is that the old brand has fallen to the bottom of trust.
In the history of the crypto industry, hacking attacks, contract breaches, cross-chain bridge theft, and team turmoil can all quickly destroy a project's brand credibility. Once a user binds a name to “stolen,” “thunderstorm,” “runaway,” and “inadequate compensation,” continuing to use the old name means continuing to be burdened with negative public opinion.
As a result, the name change became the project party's most direct PR tool, and it was also nicely called “rebranding.”
Anyswap changed its name to Multichain after being stolen, and Alpha Finance changed its name to Stella after stealing $37 million, all with similar colors. On the face of it, they are adjusting product lines and strategic positioning; however, judging from market perception, the name change also performs the function of “cutting old memories” to some extent.
3. Grey space for renaming and exchanging coins
If it were just a name change, the impact would be limited. What is really worth wary of is that when many crypto projects change their names, they are often accompanied by currency exchanges.
Exchange means that the old token needs to be migrated to a new token. The exchange will issue an announcement, the deposit and withdrawal session will be suspended, the old trading pair will be removed, and the new trading pair will go online. For the project parties, this is a rare opportunity to go public for the second time.
Incidentally, many projects will also split tokens. For example, 1:100, 1:1000, split the originally more expensive tokens into larger quantities to make a single token look cheaper. Projects such as SKY and BEAM have all adopted similar ideas. The stock split itself does not change the value of the company; low unit prices are often more likely to attract the attention of retail investors.
More importantly, after changing the name and exchanging the currency, the K line in the exchange's history is often cleared.
For many old coins, the burden of history is extremely heavy. Over the past few years, countless setbacks, downtrends, negative news, and resistance levels have all condensed into the old K line. After the launch of the new coin, it ostensibly had a new chart. There was no historical high suppression, no long-term decline, and no such intuitive memory.
This is extremely beneficial to project parties and market makers. When the old currency is migrated to the new currency, many exchanges will suspend deposits and withdrawals. At this point, the actual circulation market in the secondary market may become very light. On a small number of open trading platforms, market making capital requires only a relatively small amount of capital, which may raise the price of the Singapore dollar and create the illusion of a “sharp rise after upgrade.”
Subsequently, project parties, early participants, or market-making funds may use the restoration of liquidity and higher user tracking to complete shipments.
This is where the name change is most dangerous: it is ostensibly a brand upgrade; in essence, it may be a liquidity reset.
Further, many projects will also redesign the tokenomics during the exchange process. What the average user sees is a 1:1 migration, thinking their rights are not being compromised. However, the project party may also 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 changed its name toSelf Chain, TVK changed its name toVanar ChainThis is a typical case. They all issued significant increases in tokens for reasons such as node rewards and ecosystem construction, diluting the value of users' coin holdings.
4. The real problem is not changing the name, but evading history
Cryptographic projects can of course be renamed; this isn't a serious problem.
Changes in technology routes, expansion of product boundaries, shifting market hotspots, and cutting legal risks may all lead to reasonable brand reshaping. Examples such as Matic changing its name to Polygon show that a good name can indeed help the project take on a larger strategic space.
But more often than not, crypto projects are renamed not to establish the brand, but to escape the brand.
Escape the old K-line, escape the trap, escape hacker attacks, escape failure narratives, escape user questions, and escape untold stories.
This is the biggest difference between the crypto industry and the traditional business world: traditional companies are afraid of losing brand memory, and many crypto projects are afraid that users will remember too much.
So, when a project announces a name change, the market should not just ask what its new name is, but ask three questions:
What real ability or strategy did it add? Has its tokenomics changed? What old history would it most like users to forget?
If there are real products, real revenue, real users, and a more clear strategy behind the name change, then it could be the beginning of a new phase. But if the name change was only accompanied by currency exchanges, hot spots, additional distribution, and K line clearing, then it's probably just an old game that was beautifully packaged.
Twitter:https://twitter.com/BitpushNewsCN
Compare the TG exchange group:https://t.me/BitPushCommunity
Compare TG subscriptions:https://t.me/bitpush
