The Origins of Crypto Brand Names: Insights from The Block

The crypto industry is replete with a myriad of blockchains, protocols, venture firms, and projects. Journalists at The Block have uncovered the origins of some of their names.

Binance: a fusion of the words “binary” and “finance.” 

“It represents the convergence of these two technologies,” states the company’s website.

Coinbase: a nod to a fundamental aspect of Bitcoin’s architecture—the “coinbase,” or a type of empty transaction added first in a block by a miner as a reward claim. 

Castle Island Ventures: named after a location in South Boston, which was a British stronghold during the American Revolutionary War. 

The abbreviation CIV references the Civilization series of turn-based strategy games, of which founder Nic Carter is a fan.

Dragonfly Capital: derived from the poem “Little Pond” by Yan Wenli, a renowned poet of the Song dynasty in China.

“The dragonfly is the first creature to appear in spring. Cryptocurrencies are the spring of a new social movement, so we thought it was a fitting name,” explained founder Haseeb Qureshi.

DARMA Capital: an acronym for Digital Asset Risk Management Advisors, it also resonates with an Eastern philosophical concept.

“Dharma means a person’s life mission. I feel connected to the mission of decentralization, which blockchain can underpin,” explained company founder Andrew Keys.

Delphi Digital: draws an analogy from the Delphic Oracle, known for its prophecies.

“Just as the Delphic Oracle was a source of wisdom in ancient times, Delphi Digital can become a modern source of knowledge, innovation, and cutting-edge solutions in cryptocurrency,” shared co-founder Anil Lulla.

Polygon: before becoming Polygon, the network was known as Matic—a reference to its early attempts to scale the Ethereum blockchain using Plasma. 

Over time, the team expanded its scope to create a multichain ecosystem and offer a range of scaling solutions. A new name was needed to reflect this broader vision.

In 2021, the company rebranded to Polygon. 

“The new name reflects its ambition to become the ‘Internet of Blockchains,’ symbolizing interconnected layers and scalability, akin to a geometric polygon with multiple sides representing different scaling approaches,” noted project co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

SCROLL: the name has three inspirations. Firstly, it refers to how ancient scrolls were rolled up.

According to Leonardo Park from SCROLL, “the name originated from ‘SCaling with a ROLLup’ and ‘Smart Contract ROLLup,’ which describe the project’s core mission to scale the Ethereum blockchain beyond its current EVM limitations.”

“Finally, we want the end-user experience to be as seamless as ‘SCROLLing on your phone‘, so none of these solutions, options, and wallets should be something the user worries about,” added Park.

SingularityNET: the name directly points to the project’s long-term goal of advancing AI towards a positive technological singularity.

Superstate: a term borrowed from quantum physics to describe a more abstract concept of asset tokenization. As in quantum states, where subatomic particles can exist in two different superstates simultaneously, tokenized real-world assets coexist on-chain and off-chain, explained founder Robert Leshner.

TRON: borrowed from the film of the same name. The choice is underpinned by a philosophical reason. The film “echoed themes of fighting centralized control, which aligns with the ethos of decentralization in blockchain,” explained founder Justin Sun.

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