How Coinbase, Polygon and some of the biggest brands in crypto got their names

In the often obscure world of cryptocurrency, sometimes the most difficult thing to grok about a project is its name. This is because projects often reference the breakthrough technologies they rely on, like zero-knowledge proofs, or reference a deep part of crypto lore.

The Block has done a little research to discover why and how some of crypto’s biggest companies were named the way they were.

Binance:  The name reportedly refers to a combination of the words "binary" and "finance," according to a company blog. Binary describes a communications scheme using just 0s or 1s behind all digital encoding/decoding systems, while finance is finance.

“It represents the convergence of these two technologies in the cryptocurrency space,” the company wrote.

Coinbase: The largest U.S. crypto exchange’s name is a callback to a fundamental aspect of Bitcoin’s architecture, the so-called “coinbase,” or a type of blank transaction added by a miner as the first in the block so they can claim the block reward. While the Bitcoin subsidy is still flowing, coinbase transactions are the transactions that introduce new tokens into circulation.

Castle Island Ventures: Founded by prominent investors and researchers Nic Carter and Matt Walsh, Castle Island has grown to become one of the most prominent venture firms in crypto. According to Carter, it was named after a place in South Boston of the same name — the site of a British stronghold during the American War of Independence. The abbreviation, CIV, is also a reference to the Civilization series of turn-based strategy games Carter is a fan of.

“Our logo which is a little concentric pentagon is a stylized version of the fort on Castle Island,” Carter said, adding that the place isn’t a true island following a land reclamation effort.

“Fun fact: I had actually never been to Castle Island when we started the fund. Matt liked it because he had fond childhood memories of going there,” Carter said. “I wanted to call the fund Starling VC. But I was overruled by one of our anchor investors.”

Dragonfly Capital: Dragonfly is another much-respected venture firm focused on the crypto industry. According to co-founder Hasseb Qureshi, the name is derived from a poem — ”The Little Pond” — from Yang Wangli, a famous Song dynasty poet.

“The dragonfly is the first creature to emerge in the Spring,” Qureshi said. “Crypto is the spring of a new social movement, so we thought it was appropriate.”

DARMA Capital: Another crypto firm with perhaps a less-surprising connection to Eastern philosophy, DARMA Capital. While the initialization of Digital Asset Risk Management Advisors doesn’t exactly spell the karmic notion of dharma, founder Andrew Keys notes that the concept inspires him.

“Someone’s dharma can be considered their life mission and I’ve felt very connected to the decentralization mission that blockchain can be a substrate to,” he told The Block in an email.

Delphi Digital: Another company referencing the ineffable is the research outfit Delphi Digital. For anyone unfamiliar with the Greek mythological figure, the Oracle of Delphi was famous for delivering prophecies and guidance, co-founder Anil Lulla told The Block. People worldwide, including leaders and individuals, sought its wisdom, believing Delphi's insights were divinely inspired.

“The TLDR: We called ourselves Delphi Digital because we wanted to be the firm that provided insight, foresight and guidance in the crypto (a.k.a. ‘digital’) realm,” Lulla said. “Just as the Oracle of Delphi was a source of wisdom in ancient times, Delphi Digital could represent a modern-day source of knowledge, innovation, and cutting-edge solutions in crypto.”

Lulla said the company did an offsite in 2022 to visit the Oracle of Delphi.

Ostium: The relatively new decentralized perpetuals trading platform Ostium is looking to bridge the very real gap that exists between DeFi and TradFi by offering users a way to trade a wide range of real-world assets including commodities, forex, indices and metals.

But as co-founder Kaledora Kiernan-Linn explains it, when she says TradFi, she is thinking truly traditional. Ostium is a reference to the Latin word for port and the ancient port city called Ostia Antica, which was about 25 miles outside of Rome, Kiernan-Linn said.

“It was the hub for commodities imports in the Roman empire,” Kiernan-Linn told The Block. “All of the imports of olive oil, goats, cows and wheat came in through Ostia Antica. That was the inspiration.”

Phylax: If you can’t tell by his name alone that Phylax founder Odysseas Lamtzidis is Greek, he’d be happy to tell you. “Phylax means ‘guardian’ in ancient Greek,” Lamtzidis said. “I'm Greek.” It all adds up.

But Phylax is also a good word for a startup looking to solve the many security issues in crypto. The startup is attempting to introduce a “credible layer” to Ethereum that would enable developers to add a proof system into their code that shows if and when a project has been exploited. In other words, it's a protocol that stands by to guard over the exploitable.

Polygon: Before it was Polygon, the Layer 2 network was called Matic, a reference to its early attempts to scale the Ethereum blockchain using then-buzzy Plasma technology. In time, the team expanded its scope to building a multi-chain ecosystem and offering a range of scaling solutions, and needed a new name reflecting that broader vision, co-founder Sandeep Nailwal told The Block.

“It was rebranded to Polygon in 2021 with the new name reflecting its ambition to become the ‘Internet of Blockchains,’ symbolizing interconnected layers and scalability, much like a geometric polygon with multiple sides representing various scaling approaches,” Nailwal said.

SCROLL: Another L2, SCROLL’s team said there are three reasons behind the name. First, the name is a reference to how ancient scrolls roll up.

"The name actually came 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” and build developer- and user-friendly tools, SCROLL’s Leonardo Park said.

“Finally, we want the end-user experience to be as close to 'SCROLLing on your phone' as possible, so none of these decisions, choices and wallets needs to be something that the user is worried or concerned about,” Park said.

SingularityNET: SingularityNET may be one of those project names that seem obvious to those in the AI loop. The project is looking to provide a decentralized platform for AI services so that these AIs can cooperate and, over time, evolve toward more general intelligence.

“The name directly points to our long-term goal: enabling the growth of AI toward a positive technological singularity,” a representative said.

The “singularity” is the theoretical moment in time when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, which could open a Pandora’s box of unexplainable events and technological progress. Co-founder Ben Goertzel added that the company is specifically working “to help bring about a beneficial technological Singularity,” in the model of science fiction Ray Kurzweil, who was sensitive to the risks of humans building something that could outcompete them.

Superstate: Before founding tokenization firm Superstate, CEO Rob Leshner built the decentralized lending platform with an extremely fitting name — Compound. The name fit because users were able to earn compounding interest by lending out tokens — clean, simple direct, Leshner said. It’s a name that allegedly came to him in less than an hour, perhaps as a shower thought, he told The Block.

Superstate, however, was more difficult to name. But after a few weeks, Leshner landed upon the term borrowed by quantum physics to describe the more abstract notion of tokenizing assets. Like in quantum states, where subatomic particles can exist in two different superstates simultaneously, tokenized real-world assets live in concert on- and off-chain.

Tron: Justin Sun was making a very clear allusion to the movie (and gaming series) TRON when naming his high-throughput blockchain, he admits. But there is a philosophical reason behind the choice. The movie “featured themes of fighting against centralized control, which resonates with the blockchain ethos of decentralization,” Sun told The Block in a direct message. It's "one of Tron’s key principles."