I always had this question in mind, instead of following all those chains. Why not make my own blockchain? I mean I can make it open source and also make it decentralized. And also I can continue to build on it instead of leasing some centralized chain out there. So I looked around some of the options that I can try when it comes to making the blockchain, here are some of my findings so far.

Building A Token on Existing Chain

Instead of building your own blockchain from scratch. Making a token on existing chain can be a good option. Binance and Ethereum are the top chains on which most of the people are building their tokens. Every random project out there is making use of the binance and Ethereum and trying to build a token on it. Which is something they want to do for managing the their project and perform transaction.

This approach is a good option when project is what you seek to do instead of following the chain and it's usage. So your focus has to be on the existing token. I prefer this method when I have some use case that I want to build upon and work with. So you can choose the token which works for your use case and build accordingly.

Difficulty: Easy to Medium

Building a Blockchain with Proof of Work

Who doesn't know bitcoin? One of the blockchains were proof of work till the POS becomes standard these days. Proof of work is a good option as a new project. As long as you have miners to work on your transactions. You are good to go with the proof of work. A lot of chains like Syscoin even today make use of the proof of work and for some project it just works.

Building such chains isn't hard but requires some level of understanding of chains and the nodes. You would find some good amount of developers working on blockchains that have "proof of work" as it's consensus mechanism.

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Building a Blockchain with Proof of Stake

Ethereum 2.0 casper update and Binance chains are example of these chains work with Proof of Stake where you don't find long hours being burnt on mining. Here your content gets staked by the stakers and transactions move lot faster in comparison. These chains are also easier to use in terms of the Layer 2 solutions and building extended dApps, NFTs and other products. There are plenty of blockchain solutions on which you can work on if you have plans to build projects or use cases.

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Building a Public Chain

There are some of the public chains which are an example of how the public chains should be built. Some frameworks and the libraries are designed for such chains and so building the products and the further chain products becomes lot easier as it has the consumer support. When it comes to the development of small chains and their public use, such chains are really useful. I'd recommend checking wikipedia on regular basis to see updates on list of public chains. It can be easy, medium or even hard level difficult when it comes to public blockchain. All depends on the use case that you have planned there.

Difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard

Building a Private Chain

Private chains are a bit closed walls. What you build here turns out to be limited for your own use case. Which is kind of like opposite of the public chain. You may want to see - Hyperledger vs Ethereum comparison if you want to see what private chains do better than the public chains. I have realized that private chains don't create much issues on security side as nodes and the use case both are private within specific network. If you want to use it for the enterprise and the private business then this is the type of the chain you'd use.

Difficulty: Medium to Hard.

Where to go from here?

You have to start somewhere. You have to do something in order to build your chain right? So pick a chain and build a token first. Then practice how to make dApps and NFTs on that chain. Then slowly learn about POS and public chains. From there onwards I'd say you can focus on building your chain.

As long as you are building with some use case and project value in mind, you are good. But if you plan on building something long term, make sure it has some use case and have some plans enough where you can get community involved.

Depending on your use case the ease of development of the blockchain will vary. So find out your use case and start building!