Helping the crypto ecosystem find the Signal in the noise.

Edward Moncada
FTX TWIST
Published in
5 min readMay 11, 2018

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At Blockfolio, our vision is to make data and information more easily and readily available by uniting the different segments of our ecosystem for the benefit of all. We started back in 2015 by connecting early crypto enthusiasts to as many of the budding crypto exchanges as possible, becoming the first major cryptocurrency portfolio tracking app to deliver price information on thousands of alternative coins (altcoins) at a time when most other apps only tracked Bitcoin.

Blockfolio has since spent the past few years ensuring that our over 4 million users could easily and safely manage and track their investments in 3,000+ cryptocurrencies across 100+ exchanges. We know we still have much progress to make on that front, but we also are passionate about finding other ways to increase access to relevant information in the ecosystem.

That’s nice and all, so what now?

In exploring where to go next with Blockfolio, we considered ideas like implementing exchange integration to deliver autonomous portfolios. However, in the end we tabled this feature for later as we felt there weren’t enough exchanges that could support this yet. Realizing that many of our users would only have part of their portfolios integrated we chose against the idea of delivering a half baked cookie for now. We feel we can do much more for our ecosystem, and decided instead that we really want to deliver value through our platform in a bigger way.

Ultimately we decided to go back to where we started, which is creating connections that deliver value. Let’s connect even more groups of people within our ecosystem, and by doing so we can deliver even more valuable information to our users. Well, given that we are already connecting millions of crypto enthusiasts with the token exchanges, who else should we invite to the party that can contribute in a meaningful way?

Hello Token Teams!

We were immediately excited about idea of connecting token teams to our users, but in order to do it well we needed to be confident we were doing it in a way that solved real problems. This is why Blockfolio originally took off for us. It solved a real problem. Checking the value of your crypto portfolio was an extremely painful ritual prior to Blockfolio. Now it’s fun. So we asked ourselves, “Can we deliver in the same way when connecting token teams to our users?”

As we explored the idea of creating a communication channel for token teams, we studied the ways they currently broadcast information. In that process, we identified several key challenges they face when using the existing communication channels at their disposal:

  1. Dissemination of relevant information from teams is fragmented and often short-lived.
    Users are having to scour for team updates across Twitter, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Reddit, Medium, YouTube, email & other sources. Information is often quickly buried away by newer messages and comments. The more important the information is, the faster it will find itself buried deep in the feed. This forces teams to need to update as much as possible and through as many channels as possible.
  2. Rampant misinformation and shilling hurts the overall credibility of both the teams and the ecosystem in general.
    Short-term price speculators and bad actors hurt many teams’ long-term visions of building open, decentralized economies driven by community governance.
  3. Finding credible sources of information for teams is a challenge in itself.
    Even for our own users, it can be difficult to follow us for the latest updates. If you don’t believe me, just check out @blockfolio on Twitter. But really, please follow us on Twitter at @BlockfolioApp.

After challenging ourselves to only move forward if we solved all 3 critical issues, we arrived at a solution that got every user and token team we spoke about it to really excited.

With that, we are excited to announce our newest effort to make relevant data & information more available to all — Blockfolio Signal.

Blockfolio Signal

Blockfolio Signal is a new communication platform that connects our users more closely than ever to the leadership teams of the cryptocurrencies they care about. It allows users to receive frequent and timely updates (Signals) directly from team leadership to establish a relationship that is more personal, transparent, and ultimately long-lasting.

The mechanism is straightforward. Users who either own a coin in their portfolio or watch its price are automatically opted into seeing Signals from its leadership team in Blockfolio. No longer do users have to manually track down those teams’ various accounts across social platforms.

When teams post a Signal, it will appear at the bottom of their coin page as well as in users’ personalized Signal feeds. Signals will be short and direct. Users can also feel more secure knowing that only people directly involved in their respective projects will be allowed to post signals.

Left: Signal feed, Right: Signals on Decred Page

For certain Signals, teams can send them with a push notification to alert users of its important nature. If users don’t want to receive notifications from a particular team or at all, they can always customize those settings.

This launch is only the very first step in achieving our goals and bettering communication within the ecosystem. We will be adding more features to increase engagement between users and teams. We will also be onboarding many more teams in the months to come, so don’t fret if your favorite teams are not on Signal yet.

We know in the crypto space that things move fast and teams are building some pretty amazing things. And with so much enthusiasm and so many voices in the space, things can get kind of loud. But Blockfolio is here to help you find the Signal in the noise.

Signal is currently in Beta and available on Blockfolio today on the App Store and Google Play with 20 top cryptocurrency teams to start, including: Dash, Civic, Icon, Decred, Siacoin, Quantstamp, Kyber Network, Enigma, 0x, TenX, Zilliqa,Request Network, aelf, DigixDAO, Zcoin, UTRUST, Nexus, Mithril, IOSToken, and GameCredits.

For more info, check out www.blockfolio.com and join the conversation on Telegram.

Connect with the Raven team on Telegram

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