Regarding "how many tokens and chains are there in the crypto world," opinions have varied widely. In fact, understanding this issue is not complicated. Today, let's sort this out together.
Part One: Token Situation
Let's talk about tokens.
The number of tokens created on the entire network is conservatively estimated to have exceeded 30 million. This data is derived from statistics including mainstream public chains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin. For example, according to its official statistics, Pump.fun on Solana has created over 10 million tokens. However, don't be intimidated by the figure of over 30 million, as the vast majority of these belong to meme coins, test coins, and air coins, which are basically no longer in use.
So, how many can actually be tracked by the market? For instance, CoinGecko currently lists about 18,700 active coins; CoinGecko has certain requirements for listing, such as being listed on exchanges already included, whether centralized or decentralized, having a market price, a contract address, an official website, and a white paper. Therefore, these 18,700 tokens can be considered a comprehensive overview of the crypto space.
Continuing to filter, how many tokens are commonly found on exchanges? In other words, how many of these 18,700 tokens can be listed on exchanges? Looking at the data, there are over 400 that can be listed on Binance, over 2,100 on Gate, around 510 on Bybit, about 670 on Bitget, and around 300 on OKX. These are among the exchanges with relatively high trading volumes, and even the most on Gate is just over 2,000. So we can tentatively conclude that there are about 2,000 tokens in the entire crypto market with some trading volume.
Looking further, what is the total market capitalization of the top ten tokens among these 2,000? It is approximately $3.65 trillion, which accounts for 87.5% of the entire crypto market share. This means that the remaining 2,000 tokens combined account for less than 12.5% of the total.
That's the data regarding tokens; we will share data first without discussing thoughts.
Part Two: Public Chain Situation
Now, let's talk about public chains.
From a broad perspective, it is conservatively estimated that there are already thousands of blockchain networks globally, including public chains, private chains, consortium chains, Layer 2, sidechains, etc. However, if we only consider truly active and traceable public chains, the number is much smaller: for example, DeFiLlama tracks only over 400, while CoinGecko lists about 100–200.
So, what is the situation with these few hundred public chains?
When looking at public chains, we generally consider two indicators: either TVL (Total Value Locked) or the number of protocols. TVL is looked at more frequently, so we take the top 12 public chains by TVL and check their public chain token market capitalizations, which together account for about 77% of the entire crypto market share.
In other words, the current crypto market is basically built on these top dozen public chains.
That's all for the data sharing on tokens and public chains. What are your feelings and thoughts? Feel free to discuss in the comments.
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