Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

How to Filter the Blockchain Signal from the Noise

Having trouble keeping up with the blockchain information flood? Use IFTTT with Twitter and Telegram to filter out the noise.

Staying current with the flood of blockchain news is a lost cause. There’s too much noise out there. It’s scattered in too many channels. What makes things worse is most of the channels are real-time chat channels. It IS possible to filter noise to find the signal though. And isn’t it the signal where the ideas are?

I’ll show you how to do it in this post. We’ll use Twitter as our signal’s news source and filter and Telegram as its destination. IFTTT will automate and link the two.

Set-Up

You’ll need three accounts to do this -

Blockchain projects use a wide variety of communication channels. Twitter seems to be universal among them. The Twitter search function is key to filtering the blockchain signal from the noise.

Telegram let’s us establish custom channels. We’ll filter our Twitter feed into a custom Telegram channel.

IFTTT links Twitter to Telegram for us. It will filter our Twitter feed and only send the information we care about to our custom Telegram channel.

Steps -

1 — Login to your IFTTT account

2 — Create a new Applet

3 — Choose Twitter as the IFTTT “service

4 — Figure out What You Want to Know About

This is where your value’s added. You need to figure out what blockchain projects, concepts, news and other related Twitter accounts you want to know about.

This will take refinement. I suggest picking a couple topics to get started. You’ll get an idea how to refine your searches once you see how the filters work.

For example, I’m currently keeping an eye on Polka Dot and Cosmos. I also don’t want to miss the Gnosis Olympia start-date announcement or the Zeppelin OS token sale. Plasma is a topic I’m feeling excited about too.

5— Choose Your Triggers

This is where the magic happens. The triggers do the hard work of filtering the blockchain signal from the noise.

I use the “New tweet from search” trigger. This is a powerful trigger when you use it with Twitter’s advanced search options.

Here’s an example —

I don’t want to see every tweet that included #Plasma. In this example, I search for mentions of Plasma by Joseph Poon. Since Joseph’s developing Plasma, anything he mentions related to Plasma’s going to be worth reading!

5 — Send the Relevant Tweets to Your Telegram Channel

Note: You’ll have to set-up and connect IFTTT to your Target Telegram chat chat BEFORE it appears in IFTTT.

Choose Telegram as your “action service as IFTTT calls it.

You’ll see the option to choose a Target chat. I’ve created a Target chat named @tokenwatch. That’s where all my filtered information goes.

6 — Turn Your IFTTT Applet On

The final step is to turn on the IFTTT applet you just created.

More Blockchain Signal, Less Noise

Now IFTTT will send Tweets that meet your trigger criteria to the Telegram channel you created. I use the Tweets as headlines.

I prioritize the relevant Tweets into my workflow. Doing this lets me keep track of things to follow-up on later, without getting distracted.

If you configure your triggers correctly, you’ll only receive the blockchain signal you care about. Everyone else will be left to deal with the noise.

The key is determining what your signal is. I find using this system not only keeps me on top of the blockchain news I care about. It also requires me to refine my thinking about what developments I really care about in the space.

The system is easy to refine and update. I treat it as an evolutionary process, rather than a single set-and-forget thing. Your thinking will evolve as the world of blockchain does.

This system is a simple way to keep-up with the evolution. It will help you find the ideas in the signal, while reducing the distraction from the noise.

P.S. — Are you working on a blockchain project? My company, Chainflow, optimizes blockchain project workflow. Chainflow filters the workflow signal from the noise, helping blockchain projects succeed. Click here to learn how.