Unlocking Blockchain UTXO Transactional Patterns and Their Effect on Storage and Throughput Trade-Offs

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article presents an interesting approach on using blockchain for optimizing storage growth and maintaining high transactional throughput.

The article organisation has limited clarity in terms of methodology which is mixed with the related works / introduction / references. It appears difficult to identify clearly how the results have been obtained and if all results are own or are selected from references. 

Discussion, conclusions and open challenges are quite brief.

Abbreviations are welcome, but not all abbreviations are listed in the concerned section.

Good continuation ! 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper provides an analysis of the transaction models and execution processes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, revealing the importance of the trade-off between storage and transaction throughput in permissionless blockchains. The author employs DAG and spent-by to analyze transaction patterns and concludes that UTXO is a dense storage model but offers greater flexibility in throughput scalability. Finally, the author splits transactions based on the UTXO model into three patterns to determine the optimal dense transaction pattern and demonstrates through experiments that the split pattern provides the best compromise between throughput and storage. The article is rich in background, well-organized, but still requires further elucidation on several issues.
1. Some references lack necessary information such as issue volume, page numbers, etc. For instance, references 3, 18, 20, 29, 34, etc. Please ensure that all references are thoroughly checked for completeness. Moreover, the references should be updated as some of them appear outdated.
2. On page 12, there seems to be an issue with the section titles. Section 5.3 should encompass the content of sections 5.4 through 5.6, hence sections 5.4 through 5.6 should be set as subheadings under 5.3.
3. In sections 5.4 through 5.6, the detailed relationship between transaction throughput and storage is not explicitly clarified. The author only provides the output growth rate, which may not directly correlate with transaction throughput. For example, in Definition 3, the quantity σ represents the number of output generated within each time interval, which solely indicates the creation of new UTXOs but does not directly signify the number of transactions. However, in Definition 5, the author defines it as transaction throughput, which causes confusion. Therefore, further clarification is needed to elucidate the relationship between transaction throughput and storage in these sections.
4. Based on theoretical analysis and experimental results, the author should discussing the future development prospects of UTXO-based blockchain, particularly focusing on how the balance between transaction throughput and storage will be managed.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Reviewed article is acceptable.

Good continuation !

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Recommendation for acceptance of the manuscript