This sort of defragmentation is working against cryptocurrencies - not only does it increase the complexity of maintaining such advanced software, but also increases the learning curve for the average person, who has no idea what cryptocurrencies are.
I beg to differ. What you call "defragmentation" is diversification and competition. And this is extremely good. A blockchain is not such a complicated software anymore. Think in terms of webservers. 25 years ago, it was difficult to set up a server, but the real business was not setting up the server, but what you can build on top of it: the Amazons and eBays and Googles of the internet.
The blockchain is disrupting the world in the same way the web did 25 years ago, only now it lets you build something way more complex than a web site: an entire ecosystem for storing and transferring assets (financial or of other nature).
We do live exciting times.
I agree that the blockchain is a cool new technology, but I view it mostly as a notary service. What is unique is that it is beyond government control, and this is good, as any economics book will tell you that government organizations are inefficient.
Getting back to the point and using your example with webservers - why aren't there as many servers as cryptocurrencies? Because there's no need - instead, all efforts are focused on making the few available to be as functional, secure and faster, as they can be.
Because the blockchain is the equivalent of an Apache webserver. There are just a few of them, that's true: Apache, nginx, node.js. But there are tens of millions of websites built on top of them, competing with each other. Blockchain is just the platform, currencies are "websites".
Well, OK... but how is a niche cryptocurrency used for some marketing scheme as useful as, say, Wikipedia, which hosts a ton of information?
I don't think your comparison is really a good one. I understand you are enjoying the blockchain, but you are investing too much hope for its future purpose. It's just a notary service, and as such it will be a useful addition to a company's archive - be it a bank ledger, a historic society, keeping track on events, or even the police, safeguarding tamper-proof evidence online. It's certainly useful to cheaply send cash, and for that reason even more useful (and the true reason why cryptos soared, most notably Bitcoin) for money laundering.
But beyond that, it's just people trying to cash in on the hype of would be millionaires. Which was my initial point about EOS - it's not a technology, that the digital world needs at the moment. It's just Dan's plan to become rich - and kudos to him, for attracting such a following.
I'm enjoying the blockchain for 4-5 years already, not only since it's mainstream (1-2 years). I'm not sharing your pessimism, which doesn't mean you're not free to enjoy it as well, just like I'm enjoying my enthusiasm. I think only time will tell which one of us is enjoying the correct attitude.
Peace :)
I've been following Bitcoin since the beginning (that's 6 or 7 years, now?) and you can imagine my frustration, when its price peaked a thousand times and I never considered investing much. Lesson learned - never underestimate a money laundering scheme :D
Yes, I'm pessimistic (realistic from my point of view) that a thousand different cryptos will be widely used. That's highly unlikely - even the use of fiat currencies is consolidating - think of the US and EU monetary history. In general, however, I think that cryptocurrencies are the future of payment and we will see a couple gain wide acceptance.
Oh, and more thing - in ten or twenty years, there'll be only a couple of cryptos, with two rivaling each other. Why? Because people can't handle this much information - they won't even bother learning or using non-popular cryptos.