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 bring back 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 ecosystem Story Protocol announced that it will change its name to DATA, and IP tokens will migrate 1:1 to new DATA tokens. Within a few months, Xion changed its name to Verona, Matrixport changed its name to BIT, and TON's token symbol to GRAM. Earlier, a number of well-known projects such as Klaytn, EOS, Fantom, MakerDAO, Elrond, and Matic Network changed their names. More extreme projects have even changed their names more than once. For example, MAITRIX used names such as CENTRAL, X Network, and XLD Finance; BitSafe used the names dlcBTC and DLC.Link; Talex used the names Read2N and Metale Protocol; and KGen used the names 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. The reason traditional brands are afraid to change their names is 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 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 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 join Yuanyu...
