Catchword-named blockchain infrastructure company Soluna has launched, and made headlines with its announcement of plans for the first utility-scale computing facility powered entirely by its own renewable energy sources. The company will develop a 900MW wind farm to supply all the energy for an adjacent computing facility in southern Morocco, one of the world’s windiest regions. Catchword worked closely with the company team to develop the name Soluna earlier this spring.
The Company
Mining cryptocurrency and other blockchain operations require huge amounts of energy. According to Digiconomist, as of this June, Bitcoin mining alone consumed electricity equivalent to almost 10% of China’s annual usage. This tremendous demand puts an unsustainable strain on local grids and the planet’s energy resources while increasing the use of cheap but damaging fossil fuels.
In response to this ever-growing problem, Soluna was formed by private equity firm Brookstone Partners to integrate renewable energy production and processing-intensive computer operations like blockchain and offer an alternative to low-cost, harmful fossil fuels. Because the power will be efficiently generated on site, “Our power cost will be among the lowest in the world,” said John Belizaire, Soluna CEO, to Bloomberg. The company plans to eventually develop renewably powered centers around the globe.
The Name
“Our goal was to create a name that represented our ethos, our ambitious plan, and one that was unique in our field,” said Belizaire in a blog post about the naming process. “Soluna elegantly meets our brand objectives.”
A coinage of sol and luna [“sun” and “moon” in Latin], Soluna tells a rich story, evoking humanity’s most fundamental aspirations – looking up to the great light in the sky. Little is as permanent as the sun and moon, yet their cycles are dynamic. Pairing sun and moon suggests a scalable, stable source of power at all times, day or night.
The sun is ultimately the source of all life, energy, growth, transformation. The logo’s use of a triangle, the symbol of change (delta), for the final a in the name further expresses the transformational nature of the brand. Soluna expresses the renewable resource of solar energy, while more generally evoking the sustainability and beauty of the natural world.
The name recalls “solution,” which the company provides to the problem of evolving technology’s increasing energy consumption. The name also recalls “una” (one), suggesting the comprehensiveness of the company’s all-in-one energy production and computer processing model.
Soluna expresses the brand’s humanity and compassion, while the name’s Latin base suggests seriousness and intelligence. The alternating consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel construction and initial sibilant convey flexible strength and make the word easy for an international audience to pronounce. The Latin base also makes it easy for a global audience to understand and remember.
The company team reviewed more than 100 names during the process, with 10 finalists. As often happens, the company’s final choice was not the first one that jumped out at them. (Company names, especially, require a little time for the layers of meaning and metaphor to unfold. This is actually an important tool for building brand engagement. As we recognize each new layer in the name, or the visual identity, we are rewarded with a little hit of pride for figuring it out.)
As the team lived with the top name candidates, one name stood out, as Belizaire explained in his blog post: “Finally, we chose Soluna for the brand because it tells our story the best.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Catchword is very proud to have partnered with John and the Soluna team and wishes them great success in greening the blockchain world. Catchword-named blockchain infrastructure company Soluna has launched, and made headlines with its announcement of plans for the first utility-scale computing facility powered entirely by its own renewable energy sources.
