Not strange at all is the same as buying an older domain name because it would be better for SEO. In this case buying a small project with a suitable name gives the dev team proper rights over the name and is the right thing to do too. The previous owner was properly compensated, so everyone happy.

I found

Trush ?

There seems to be some misunderstanding about the re-branding effort that I would like to clear up.

We've been watching the various conversations pop up about re-branding since the inception of the foundation. When the name "Dash" was recommended by the community, we saw there was a decent amount of support for the name. It also represented what we're attempting to accomplish with Darkcoin, something fast and private as cash. It also sounds very friendly and works as a verb.

After this the foundation started doing some research and found a patent application for the name "Dash". If this patent application was approved it means we couldn't use the name at all. Instead of approaching the community at this point and saying we were thinking about rebranding, we decided to hire a patent attorney to challenge this. We were hoping that we would be able to clear up all of the legal work before approaching the community about the name.

To challenge the patent application required that we purchase the rights to Dashcoin. We need to be able to show prior use of the name "Dash" in order to be able to challenge the application. At this point we could have approached the community with what we were doing and asked the community to fund it, but this would have created a good deal of uncertainty in the market. Instead, I funded the purchase of Dashcoin out of my own pocket, which cost a substantial amount of money. The purpose of this was incase the trademark challenge didn't work, we just would bury the project and leave it be.

If it wasn't for the patent application, this would have been much more transparent. But we were trying to protect the interests of the investors of the coin and not create unnecessary uncertainty.

I'm a long time lurker and DRK holder, got some MNs ticking away nicely....I would just like to say that I am DELIGHTED to hear the re-branding news.

That is all.

I am increasingly happy about it as well. At least no one can say it's a boring life being in this coin.

I like advancement and solving problems, and the branding was a huge one. More than anything it will wake people up and draw a lot of attention to the roadmap IMO.

(+ I just made a tidy gain on my Monero from all the chaos, now realised  )

Yeah... I missed that boat....damn good one tok.

 Try it

you can't loose coins. Its a wonderful experience, it basically works almost perfect. A few glitches, but you never loose your coins (except for the odd denomination fee)

One similar case to ours is OpenBazaar. The software was released at a Toronto hackathlon by Amir Taaki and a few others. It was called DarkMarket. One developer, Brian Hoffman, soon renamed it (he also forked from the original, but there was no development on the DarkMarket repository, so it is effectively a rebranding exercise). He's said many times he did that to avoid the negative press. Very shortly he got a lot attention and people contributing. Most of those people probably would have not showed up if he had kept the old name. Please consider too the positive aspect of being able to recruit among people who were not comfortable being associated with dark.

In our case, we have lost Vertoe along the way and pissed off a few people I respect, which I deeply lament. But this has happened mostly because we did the discussion process wrong, not because changing the name is a bad idea.