How Does Information Transmission Influence the Value Creation Capability of a Digital Ecosystem? An Empirical Study of the Crypto-Digital Ecosystem Ethereum

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Title: I suggest to change the following part of the title "An empirical study of digital currency ecosystem" as "An empirical study of crypto-digital ecosystem Ethereum"

row 48: I recommend to indicate the original sources of the data collected by H.H. and presented in Table 1.

row 56: you wrote "how to measure the value creation capability of a digital ecosystem remains unsolved by prior researches", please consider also the following thesis presented by Fumagalli, Lucarelli, Musolino and Rocchi (Sustainability, 2018 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/6/1757/htm ): "By considering the Facebook value-creation model, we may propose a paradigmatic example; value is essentially based on a process of expropriation of the life skills of individuals (or from what we can define, in a very broad sense, general intellect [65] and social reproduction [35]) for purposes of private accumulation. The process of creating value is no longer limited to the single working day, but extends to incorporate the whole of human existence, that is, the lifetime that is necessary to generate, again, physical strength, but also affections, relationships, social relations and imaginaries, and therefore social knowledge. Platform capitalism proposes to provide a measure by imposing business logics on the whole of human life through different infrastructures." 

row 66: please define "crypto-digital ecosystem"

rows. 111-127 [MAJOR POINT]: I recommend to rewrite this part, by explaining why the effect of advanced private information on asset prices are relevant for the digital currencies. Particularly you should argue why you can use digital currency traffic in a crypto-digital ecosystem as a proxy of information transmission. 

row 114: please give an example of digital fiat currency.

rows 182-183: You wrote that "there are two variables that reflect the demand force from a digital ecosystem on digital currency: the price and the return of digital currency". Is the "return" defined as "the rate of growth of digital currency prices"?

row 195 [MAJOR POINT]: you wrote about three critical factors, but you do not describe what they are.

rows 205-206 [MAJOR POINT]: you wrote: "with the analysis above, we thus propose several hypotheses on value creation in crypto-digital ecosystem Ethereum". I am not convinced that the 8 hypotheses derive from the theoretical analysis. My impression is that they derive from the data you actually have. Moreover you must introduce those hypotheses because of the empirical strategy you use, i.e. VAR. My suggestion is: rewrite the above sentence and directly refer to the empirical strategy.

row 247: Please explain why "the three variables are critical to value creation activity from market transaction perspective".

figure 2: you do not adequately stress that UA variable after 2017 become stable! Then it is not possible that in the period 2017-2018 "there wer almost 8.05 million new registration each week!" Moreover at row 297 you say that the growth rate of user number is relatively steady! Figure 2 shows that in the period 2017-2018 the growth rate of user number should be near to 0. 

Paragraph 4.2: I suggest to show the results of the ADF test. Are you sure you are implementing a DID method? You are simply using first differences of the variables. Can you better explain the point?

row 274: you wrote: "As stated in Section 3, the endogeneity mong these three variables is so strong ..." But you did not demonstrate it. It is an assumption! Please rewrite the sentence.

row 295: "the demand of Ether is susceptible." The sentence appears incomplete. After susceptible you should insert something more.

row 348-350: Please explain better the sentence. "the initial driving force on the interaction among three variables in the change rate of user number and user number is starting point of the network effect by information transmission.." Very confused

row 368: "Therefore, with the only network effect lying on Ether traffic, users respond to Ether return significantly but trading activities in the past with limited attention" Please deepen the argument.

row 420 [MAJOR POINT]: "our further research has observed that user number is still the initial driving force in a crypto circumstances where token play a role of exchange medium ecc.." But Ether is not a token. To a beginner, the entire concept of Ethereum and Ethereum token can get very confusing very fast.  Ethereum not only has its own currency (Ether) but also has tokens on top of that which can act as currency themselves. 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The article provides interesting insights into investigating the role of information transmission mechanism in value creation capability of digital ecosystem exemplified by the blockchain transaction data. 

In general, both the content and the structure of the article are correct and transparent presented, however, there are some changes required.

This article would benefit from the following improvements:

Lines 40-44: please use “digital ecosystem” instead of “digital ecosystem kind” Lines 73-80: the contribution should be explained in conclusions and not in the Introduction The introduction should provide not only a research background but also an indication of a precise research objective and methods used. Adding a brief indication of the logic of presenting the research material (i.e. the brief description of the content of each section of the paper) in the last paragraph of the introduction is highly recommended. The Literature review presents important highlights on the current state of the art. The authors justified precisely the main issues and their importance. However, the research model presented in Figure 1 should more accurately reflect the developed hypothesis. This model is too general and only partly reflects the categories included in the hypotheses. The use of research methods is adequate, however the methodology could be better explained, including the justification of sample selection, data collection and data analysis. It is necessary to describe the choice of research method, including its strengths and weaknesses for the research. Lines 215, 231, 354 and 370: the figures numbering is wrong Line 288: write “Research findings” instead of “Results and Findings”

The academic language is correct, however the wording, typos - might be improved. General proofreading would be advisable.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Reviewer 3 Report

The research topic is interesting and the paper is well grounded in the relevant literature. The hypotheses development is interestingly presented.

r. 29 - various ecosystems - this is rather vague and not rigorous

r. 52-53 - the search for scientific consensus in such a developing issue is quite ambitious 

at r.231 reference is made to figure 3. Probably is should have been figure 2. It should be noted that the figure at r.370 is labeled figure 2 instead of 3.  

r.235 - should there be July instead of August?

Significant English editing is necessary from a native speaker. Also, some text editing is required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors highly improved the article. I suggest to accept it in this form