Blockchain Applicability for the Internet of Things: Performance and Scalability Challenges and Solutions
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript deals with blockchain technologies and their applicability especially for IoT scalability.
The manuscript is well-organized and -structured.
Its contribution stems from analysis of the state of the art blockchain challenges based on the authors' insights and implications.
However, there are minor comments with the manuscript for revisions.
- The contents of Section 4 (core part) is relatively short and Section 5 uses a descriptive approach. I recommend adding more sentences about discussion/details.
- Minor spell checking and proofreading is required.
- No abbreviation/acronym is provided for HFC (Figure 5). Please check the abbreviation/acronym throughout the manuscript.
Author Response
Please feel free to attach the response letter (Reviewer # 1)
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The contribution includes directing Blockchain architects, designers, and researchers in the broad domain to select the unblemished combinations of Blockchain-powered IoT applications. In addition, the paper promises to bring a deep insight into the state-of-the-art Blockchain platforms, namely Ethereum, Hyperledger, and IOTA, to exhibit the respective challenges, constraints, and prospects in terms of performance and
scalability.
Author Response
Please feel free to attach the response letter (Reviewer # 2)
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I am pleased to have the opportunity to review this research paper. This study attempted to explore blockchain Applicability for the Internet of Things. The subject is appropriate and interesting but there are many concerns in the article that make it unsuitable for publication at its present state. The following inputs might help the author/s to improve the paper. Authors should modify the article following the comments indicated below to increase the quality of research justification, contributions, originality and findings.
First of all, paper research gap. Please improve this part in the introduction section. There is insufficient support and weak arguments in support of the objective that is proposed. In the final part of the introduction, the proposed objectives, originality, and gaps that would be covered should be better justified. Also a summary explaining how the author will perform the methodology is requested.
Literature review is not well developed. There are just descriptions of other papers but not a real analysis applied to this proposed method. What is the originality of this research? Improve this paragraph, the paper research gap and originality should be better presented at the end of the introduction section.
Improve discussion. Discussion needs to be a coherent and cohesive set of arguments that take us beyond this study in particular, and help us see the relevance of what the authors have proposed. Author need to contextualize the findings in the literature, and need to be explicit about the added value of your study towards that literature. Also, other studies should be cited to increase the theoretical background of each of the methods used. Findings should be contextualized in the literature and should be explicit about the added value of the study towards the literature.
Questions to be answered:
What practical/professional and academic consequences will this study have for the future of scientific literature (theoretical contributions)?
Why is this study necessary? Again, the authors should make clear arguments to explain what is the originality and value of the proposed model. This should be stated in the final paragraphs of the introduction and conclusion sections.
Please make sure your 'conclusion' section underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results, as indicated previously. Please revise your conclusion part into more details. Basically, you should enhance your contributions, limitations, underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results and future study in this section.
Please consider this structure for the manuscript final part:
Discussion
Conclusion
Theoretical Implications
Practical Implications
Limitations and future research
I would also urge the authors to read the articles listed below before completing the manuscript revision. The author will understand that the article background and structure can be improved as well as the method development. Also, there is still a gap on the added value of your work in the context of proper and current research (up to 2022). Please consider adding new references:
To improve the background of literature review about connected devices and IoT:
Saura, J. R., Ribeiro-Soriano, D., & Palacios-Marqués, D. (2021). Using data mining techniques to explore security issues in smart living environments in Twitter, Computer Communication, 179, 285-295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2021.08.021
To better structure the article:
Khan, M. A., & Salah, K. (2018). IoT security: Review, blockchain solutions, and open challenges. Future generation computer systems, 82, 395-411.
To identify challenges of IoT:
Saura, J. R., Ribeiro-Soriano, D., & Palacios-Marqués, D. (2021). Setting privacy “by default” in social IoT: Theorizing the challenges and directions in Big Data Research, Big Data Research, 25, 15 July 2021, 100245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bdr.2021.100245
Also, there is still a gap on the added value of your work in the context of proper and current research (up to 2022). There are insufficient references. Good luck with your revision
Author Response
Thank you so much for your watchful obseravtion. We have carefully considered all the comments and tried our best to respond those respectively. Please feel free to see the highlighted text and the attached rejoinder. (Reviewer # 3)
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have applied correctly the indicated changes. The manuscript is ready to be published.
