It's not just you. This truly bugs me -- enough to resurrect the topic.
I'm a fairly rational person, and an engineer, but because branding is absolutely critical to project success, the lame name alone made me limit my initial investment. There is zero cool factor to the name, which I expect makes many investors yawn and look elsewhere.
The "SAFE" part is fine. The "MAID" part only hurts the coin.
If we go by the
Igore naming guide, Maidsafe is a functional name (functional names, like "Computek" and "Qualiserve", are the bottom of the barrel for branding). Maidsafe is also evocative, but in the wrong way (I don't think they intended for you to imagine a cautious housemaid).
The best brand names are easy to remember and evocative in a compelling way.
Examples of great names, from a marketing perspective:
Dash <- "Digital cash" that's fast. Both functional and experiential. Perfect branding.
Ether <- Evocative and somewhat functional. Has cool factor, and sort of describes the project in an abstract way. Love it.
Tesla <- Evocative.
Virgin <- Evocative and provocative. Not functional at all, yet one of the most successful examples of branding I know of.
Rather than describing the coin in its name, it's better to evoke to the idea of security. "Safe" is okay, but can still be interpreted as boring. Something evocative like "Vault" would interest me more.
Maidsafe is an acronym. It's also the name of A Company, not the network. It's already known as
Safecoin.
Safecoin will be the currency on the
Safenetwork. You can use
Safemail, or
Safechat, or go to the
Safemarket. Maybe post a video on
SafetubeSeriously, you're engineer and didn't look into maid further, because of it's name? BTC has the Pizza guy paying 10,000 BTC for a pizza. You will be known as the ENGINEER who has already lost out on 10x possible gains! Lol! Why? Because you weren't evoked?
What does Safe evoke? Security.
Didn't see this earlier, but you're wrong to assume I didn't do my due diligence and I didn't invest.
My portfolio is up 13x since this was posted. I looked into MAID in depth long ago, and invested a decent amount (less than in Siacoin, more than in Storj).
I would have invested more if it was better branded, but I still have a decent position. So far, MAID is my worst performer, but I'm holding in anticipation of big gains long term. I've also invested in some other projects built on the Safenetwork.
Zero regrets. I invested the most into Siacoin at 29 satoshis, which is paying off ridiculously well.
Safe is brandable, as I mentioned before, so I have more confidence in "Safenetwork" than "Maidsafe". MAID is useless and actually harmful for branding. It being an acronym is irrelevant to that. Massive upside (more than 10x speculative pumps) will only happen with widespread adoption, and mainstream users don't care about technical acronyms. Glad they seem to be moving away from MAID and toward SAFE as the key word in the brand.