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.

The fact that you ask and insinuate rather than just checking says a lot tbh. Why cast mud when it would take you 5 mins to check and read up about him and their financial situation and incentives?

David gave all of his shares away to the maidsafe foundation/charity - city kids and education is their area if I remember right. The charity has no link to the business other than controlling David's shares and some of the IP (defensive not offensive patents).

David is an engineer with a vision. He wants to provide privacy, security and freedom to everyone in the digital world. Unlike most dreamers he's been working on his big dream for 11 years (with a team of 15+ talented devs for the last few years). I doubt any of them are in a project like this for the money. They live off nothing in a little town in Scotland and they stretch every penny. Maidsafe holds well under 20M maids now anyway, they will make their money from the apps they build, not the ico coins - which are changed 1:1 for safecoins when the network launches.

If you have an actual issue, misgiving or criticism I'm sure we can play nice and discuss it. I don't know everything about the project, but I reckon I know enough to at least find reasonable responses to any issue anyone has so far mentioned in this thread.

You can clearly see from my history that I am not a shill. I've spent most of my time on here in IOTA thread and I am 'Jabba' on the maidsafe forum. I am clearly a fan of the project. Maybe I'm misguided and it will fail horribly, or maybe you've just made assumptions that you'll live to regret. I guess time will tell what the result is, but either way the upside makes it the best bet in crypto imo (whether or not it succeeds).

I don't care anyway, I have no desire to convince you to get on this train. Amazing projects don't require marketing (like btc), they sell themselves when and if they actually work. It will be amazing if SAFE does work, and even the most critical will then be able to see how obvious it was with the benefit of hindsight

Nope.  The Chinese government isn't helping miners with 'hidden subsidies', the government doesn't actually like bitcoin or miners.  However, it is easy to steal electricity in China and Chinese people have no morals at all.  So, burning up tons of coal and killing the little pink lungs of your neighbor's children to make a few trinkets in magic internet money doesn't really bother them.  It's a dog-eat-dog world, and let me tell you they do.  They even eat Raw Dog.  The fuckers are disgusting.

Has anyone else noticed an incredible amount of self coin hyping on these forums or is it just me looking into it a little much?
I don't honestly believe the best way to promote one's project is to needlessly spam about it, makes the thing look unprofessional as a whole.

(this is in reference to the second post on this thread, the etheruem fanboys are absolutely full of themselves, please stop spamming)

Zcash is interesting.. But not entirely sure if it's game changing.

i wouldn't mind owning a piece of land in falklands and raise some sheeps.
so, what is the hypes with this coin?

with other coins plus the hype with ibm. none exist and with nothing in sight after 2 years with $50mill they have collected. the question is what these bagholders hypes about?

hiding or no hiding all the same. satoshi is still hiding and his coin worth billions with a good solid working wallet. this homeless ehertherirueim get rich scammer buttnrin have no solid wallet and this is the reason his scam not worth that much? oh, wait, it is not wallet, it is a mist!

chew kock is soon to be buttnrin ethoreruiem bagholder, congrats. you know what? you and buttrin are sound perfect together, we all should change this coin to queer coin united or wait until a working wallet come out? oh wait, it is not wallet, it is a mist! perhaps 500 years when a solid mist coming out? do you even know or expecting with the mist?

i'm your daddy, cum chew my..... finger. welcome to the queer coin etherooereeiirum bagholder club. lol
by the way chew kok is perfect name for you, son.

Lets see the ethereum team deliver something of substance so we don't have to speculate about their legitimacy. I understand what Buterin is trying to do, but I'm very skeptical that he can pull it off.

oh sh... i didnt read this earlier. i just buy 1 eth this morning. first time to trade and this is what altcoin is for scam. gotta stick to btc for life.

Yo clueless n00b, do you not understand the PoS doesn't rectify the fundamental flaw in the economics of the verification of long running scripts that I explained upthread and for which I have been banned for trying to point out in the numerous threads pumping Ethereum that spammed the Altcoin Discussion forum today.

Doesn't Theymos understand that you can never silence a person who knows he is just and correct. A person will fight to the death when they know truth is on their side. And will eventually win. Those who try to obscure truth will always eventually lose.