How many blockchains do we really need

 
Good morning/evening
 
So I have recently looked at Cronos chain to see if it has had much usage to make it worth investing in, then I looked at Celestia to see if there was anything there that would make me want to continue holding it and it has all made me think about how many blockchains we actually need! Let’s be honest: blockchains are multiplying faster than meme coins in a bull market. Every week there’s a new “Layer 1 revolution” or “Ethereum killer” promising blazing speed, microscopic fees, and enough decentralization to make Satoshi shed a tear of pride. But at some point, you have to ask, how many blockchains are out there? And more importantly, how many do we actually need?
 
As of today, there are literally thousands of blockchains in existence. We’re not just talking about the big boys like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana There are niche chains, testnets that somehow turned into real ecosystems, forks of forks, and experimental projects that claim to be solving “the blockchain trilemma”. Depending on how you count, public chains, private chains, sidechains, Layer 2s—you could say the number is in the low thousands. And yes, most of them are ghost towns with three validators and a Telegram group full of bagholders pretending the price is about to moon.
 

 
I guess the reason there are so many chains is simple, everyone wants to build their own kingdom so it can be 'the next big thing'. Developers launch chains like startups launch apps. Investors fund them because maybe, just maybe, they’ll be early to the next Solana. Communities flock in with dreams of 100x returns. And when it doesn’t work out, the chain quietly fades into irrelevance. But here’s the bigger question: how many do we really need? The honest answer is not nearly as many as we have!
 
The dream is interoperability, right? Bridges, cross-chain swaps, shared liquidity. Sounds amazing until you realize bridges have been some of the most hacked infrastructure in all of crypto. Billions lost because somebody thought sending assets across a bridge was safer than leaving them in a hot wallet (I avoid bridges as much as possible but sometimes, needs must.)
 

 
How many chains I think we need (Share your list in the comments)
 
If we’re being practical, we probably only need a handful of major blockchains.

• Bitcoin. Store of value (I know we are supposed to spend it and do daily transactions with it but possibly we will in time, I have lost count of the times I have said 'do you take Bitcoin', only to be laughed at.)
• Ethereum. As much as I do not use Ethereum it is the secure smart contract chain and has many users and stakers and protocols.
• Solana. The super fast, efficient, low cost blockchain. (Yes I hold Solana, yes I love using Solana and yes I can trade all day and it costs me next to nothing.)
• Gaming chain. Immutable X or equivalent as gaming has its own quirks, massive transaction throughput, asset ownership for millions of players, and micro payments
• DePin chain for lots of devices/nodes, lightweight transactions, real-world incentives. A dedicated chain for decentralized infrastructure (like wireless networks, compute, storage)
• An Ethereum L2 because until Ethereum is 'fixed' it will still need at least 1 L2 to process transactions with some reasonable speed and cost.

 
Perhaps my list is a bit short but surely no more than 12 are actually needed compared to this graph showing how many there are!
 

 
The chains that were going to be the future
 
Then there are a couple of chains that I thought showed great promise but didnt really perform Polkadot was supposed to be the great connector, the internet of blockchains where parachains would seamlessly interoperate and everyone would live happily ever after in a multichain utopia. Instead, it feels like most parachains are ghost malls, lots of empty shops, no foot traffic, and the occasional shill standing outside yelling about “long-term vision.” The tech is perfect in theory, but in practice it’s been slow to attract real users. I did hold DOT for a while because, to me, the idea sounded great and I could understand the vision.
Then there’s Internet Computer (ICP). The hype machine around this thing was crazy and I was tempted. It launched with a lot of hype, the tech showed promise to those that could understand it (I was not one of them!) Shiny whitepapers and flashy promises don’t always translate into adoption. Users don’t care about your cutting edge consensus model or your 100-page technical manifesto. They care about apps that work, fees that don’t hurt, and ecosystems that don’t require a PhD to navigate. Chains like Polkadot and ICP show that in crypto, being over engineered can be just as bad as being underwhelming.
 
Having all of these chains must actually weaken the whole ecosystem. Liquidity gets scattered, developers split their attention or have to learn different types of code and it can even get confusing for users, I am bridging this to there I need this token for gas, that token for gas, you end up with a load of tokens dotted around because you sent some here, there and everywhwere because you want to buy a token on some chain you don't use much. In reality, how many chains have you used in say, the last year? For me I would say no more than 10. I want to keep it simple, if I can do 90% of what I want to do on 1 chain, I will, and if that chain happens to be easy to use, with low fees and is really fast then I am happy. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).
 
To conclude
 
At the end of the day, the blockchain industry doesn’t need thousands of competing islands with sketchy bridges and tribal followings. It needs a few solid continents, chains that can handle scale, security, and real-world adoption without collapsing under their own hype. The rest? They’re experiments, and most experiments fail. That’s fine. Failure is part of innovation. But let’s stop pretending every whitepaper is a world revolution waiting to happen.
So how many blockchains do we really need? Not as many as we’ve got. Probably a handful that cover money, apps, gaming, infrastructure, and payments. The rest are just background noise, liquidity sinks, or future entries in the blockchain graveyard. And when the dust settles, history won’t remember the thousands of chains that came and went. It’ll remember the few that actually mattered.
 
What are your thoughts? How many chains do you think we need, or how many do you actually use?
 
As always thanks for reading and please feel free to comment.