Asset Ownership Transfer and Inventory Using RFID UHF TAGS and Ethereum Blockchain NFTs

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Asset ownership transfer and inventory using RFID UHF TAGS and NFT blockchain Ethereum smart contracts

·         Authors should include only papers related to the work.

·         There are a few papers that need to trim out and include the latest papers in order to find the research gaps.

·         In the literature survey, authors should write research gaps of existing models.

·         Authors should refer to some latest papers for the same and make a proper table for the state –art work.

·         https://www.mdpi.com/2624-800X/2/2/19 

·         https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2021.12.001 

·         https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9153770/authors#authors 

·          

·         The contributions in the paper should be enhanced and presented clearly. Compared with existing works, what are the advantages of the methods proposed in this paper?

·          All figures need to make with high resolution and more appropriate

·          Motivation of the proposed scheme is not clear.

·          Authors have check in page (3 & 6)  (line number 95; 220; 224) for [?]

·         Authors have to discuss how The usage of blockchain technology allows the production of very flexible and complex solutions, especially Ethereum

·         In the results section, graphs are not clear and need produce in more quality.

·         Analysis of the results is not clear and seems it is cooked. Hence, the authors have to show all metric graphs properly.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We thank you for your time. Also, thank you for your valuable and detailed review of our paper. We ordered and answered each of your points below, and in the reviewed paper version. For clarity, the comments are included below listed with our comments on each issue listed in between. Additionally, we made a complete revision of the English redaction.

Authors should include only papers related to the work.

·There are a few papers that need to trim out and include the latest papers in order to find the research gaps.

·In the literature survey, authors should write research gaps of existing models.

·Authors should refer to some latest papers for the same and make a proper table for the state –art work.

·https://www.mdpi.com/2624-800X/2/2/19

·https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2021.12.001

·https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9153770/authors#authors

·The contributions in the paper should be enhanced and presented clearly. Compared with existing works, what are the advantages of the methods proposed in this paper?

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a complete revision of the introduction and added a section for related works published.

·All figures need to make with high resolution and more appropriate

• The figures used in the paper use the eps vectorized format, except for the screenshots and photos.

·Motivation of the proposed scheme is not clear.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, We make a complete revision of the introduction and added a section for related works published.

·Authors have check in page (3 & 6) (line number 95; 220; 224) for [?]

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we check and found the problem in the references now is fixed.

·Authors have to discuss how The usage of blockchain technology allows the production of very flexible and complex solutions, especially Ethereum

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a complete revision and complemented the section.

·In the results section, graphs are not clear and need produce in more quality.

·Analysis of the results is not clear and seems it is cooked. Hence, the authors have to show all metric graphs properly.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we updated figures 13 and 14 to be more clear.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review Report

Manuscript

Asset ownership transfer and inventory using RFID UHF TAGS and NFT blockchain Ethereum smart contracts

Manuscript # Electronics-2041636

Submitted in the journal “Electronics”

Summary

This study focuses on presenting the proof of concept based on the integration of blockchain and RFID tags. This integration makes the update of the necessary information in a central system. Thus, reducing the time required especially in the administrative approval in the environment of the institute or university.

The authors have significantly improved the manuscript with the addition of results and proof-of-work. It is acceptable after some minor changes/additions.

·       The objective needs to be clearly defined for the easy understanding of readers.

·       Line 95 a reference is missing 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We thank you for your time. Also, thank you for your valuable and detailed review of our paper. We ordered and answered each of your points below, and in the reviewed paper version. For clarity, the comments are included below listed with our comments on each issue listed in between. Additionally, we made a complete revision of the English redaction.

Review Report

Manuscript

Asset ownership transfer and inventory using RFID UHF TAGS and NFT blockchain Ethereum smart contracts

Manuscript # Electronics-2041636

Submitted in the journal “Electronics”

Summary

This study focuses on presenting the proof of concept based on the integration of blockchain and RFID tags. This integration makes the update of the necessary information in a central system. Thus, reducing the time required especially in the administrative approval in the environment of the institute or university.

The authors have significantly improved the manuscript with the addition of results and proof-of-work. It is acceptable after some minor changes/additions.

·The objective needs to be clearly defined for the easy understanding of readers.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a complete revision of the introduction and added a section for related works published.

·Line 95 a reference is missing

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we check and found the problem with the references now is fixed.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper has a very low scientific content and looks more as a report that mixes a bit of a functional specification and the description of a technical solution.

Therefore it requires a major review to increase the scientific sound, explain the scientific motivation with respect to the relevant state-of-the-art research papers, a frank yet foundamental explanation of pro and contra with future challenges.

Overall I feel that it is not structured as a scientific paper and, although it contains interesting information, I am not able to understand if the content is novel.

As far as I can see, in the end, it is the presentation of a proof-of-concept DAPP...so what is the scientific contribution to the state of the art?

--

Below you can find the comments to address along the paper.

Introduction:

1) Frankly speaking, the problem of asset management hereby presented is not new and afflict many types of organization worldwide. 

Although authors are citing a certain number of papers, they are not providing any comment that allow to understand what other scholars (and practitioners) have done to tackle the same issue and in order to understand what their "research" is doing to improve the state of the art. 

2) I see a lack of motivation in the choice to depict the problem scenario immediately in the introduction with the use case (figure 1). The introduction section is one of the most critical parts of a manuscript and should be consistent enough to explain to readers the problem addresses, the limits of the state of the art, the motivations, a short summary of the methodology and findings (or innovation? in this case the proof-of-concept solution?) and the structure of the paper.

3) Therefore, authors have to rewrite the introduction according to the previous comments and possibly being able to achieve a introduction that does not need the specific case of Figure 1 to explain the problem, as it can eventually be included in a following section for their use case scenario.

4) The state of the art should include information about other papers in the sector of RFID, BLE, IoT, etc, in the sector of Blockchain (as they will address the lack of the state of the art with this technology) and give an overview of what has been done by others as for the asset management. 

Just for make it clear, in my previous job, the Company where I worked used to apply RFID in the documents so as to be able to detect them quickly...therefore the way how the introduction is presenting the problem is not giving to me the idea of a real problem to solve.

Approach

This section is basically their prototype and must be moved to Section 3.

Before discussing this section, authors should add a new section with the problem to solve, basically moving Figure 1 in this new section where they explain the problem they need to solve.

I want to explain that the problem must be described with scientific rigour therefore authors MUST explain what novelties they are introducing with respect to the state of the art.

As far the issue that I see in this current section, below my comments:

5) Line 95 a reference is missing.

6) They discuss the concept of smart contract (line 101) without giving any contest before. I am not saying to introduce a section regarding the blockchain technology, but at least in the approach they should provide a section with the Methodology where they explain the methodology and the tools they want to use (and why also with respect to the state of the art). In other words, I would rephrase the title because in the Scenario they are explaining the features of the Blockchain...but not the reasons for using it in the asset management applications.

7) Authors should also refer to relevant literature regarding NFT and DAPP.

- Bellagarda, Jagger, and Adnan M. Abu-Mahfouz. "Connect2NFT: A Web-Based, Blockchain Enabled NFT Application with the Aim of Reducing Fraud and Ensuring Authenticated Social, Non-Human Verified Digital Identity." Mathematics 10, no. 21 (2022): 3934.

- Rasolroveicy, Mohammadreza, and Marios Fokaefs. "Performance and Cost Evaluation of Public Blockchain: An NFT Marketplace Case Study." In 2022 4th Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services (BRAINS), pp. 79-86. IEEE, 2022.

- Chiacchio, F., D’Urso, D., Oliveri, L. M., Spitaleri, A., Spampinato, C., & Giordano, D. (2022). A Non-Fungible Token Solution for the Track and Trace of Pharmaceutical Supply Chain. Applied Sciences, 12(8), 4019.

-

Results and analysis

8) it becomes clear only now that authors are giving also some  evaluation and economics of their prototype (Figure 13-16). But, as I can see it is not very well developed and it is not clear how the costs can increase in a real production environment.

Discussion

9) The discussion is an interesting new section where authors explain the different challenges and questions raised in their study. 

Since it contains also some information about the topics discussed in the paper with their current issues, it can be used also to rewrite the introduction section and give to the readers a context which is currently missing.

Conclusions

10) This section is very poor and must be rewritten to explain what findings have been reported, the improvements with respect to the state of the art and future challenges.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We thank you for your time. Also, thank you for your valuable and detailed review of our paper. We ordered and answered each of your points below, and in the reviewed paper version. For clarity, the comments are included below listed with our comments on each issue listed in between. Additionally, we made a complete revision of the English redaction.

Review Report

This paper has a very low scientific content and looks more as a report that mixes a bit of a functional specification and the description of a technical solution.

Therefore it requires a major review to increase the scientific sound, explain the scientific motivation with respect to the relevant state-of-the-art research papers, a frank yet foundamental explanation of pro and contra with future challenges.

Overall I feel that it is not structured as a scientific paper and, although it contains interesting information, I am not able to understand if the content is novel.

As far as I can see, in the end, it is the presentation of a proof-of-concept DAPP...so what is the scientific contribution to the state of the art?

--

Below you can find the comments to address along the paper.

Introduction:

1) Frankly speaking, the problem of asset management hereby presented is not new and afflict many types of organization worldwide. Although authors are citing a certain number of papers, they are not providing any comment that allow to understand what other scholars (and practitioners) have done to tackle the same issue and in order to understand what their "research" is doing to improve the state of the art.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a complete revision of the introduction and added a section for related works published.

2) I see a lack of motivation in the choice to depict the problem scenario immediately in the introduction with the use case (figure 1). The introduction section is one of the most critical parts of a manuscript and should be consistent enough to explain to readers the problem addresses, the limits of the state of the art, the motivations, a short summary of the methodology and findings (or innovation? in this case the proof-of-concept solution?) and the structure of the paper.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a redistribution of the paper.

3) Therefore, authors have to rewrite the introduction according to the previous comments and possibly being able to achieve a introduction that does not need the specific case of Figure 1 to explain the problem, as it can eventually be included in a following section for their use case scenario.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a redistribution of the paper and the figure in question.

4) The state of the art should include information about other papers in the sector of RFID, BLE, IoT, etc, in the sector of Blockchain (as they will address the lack of the state of the art with this technology) and give an overview of what has been done by others as for the asset management.

Just for make it clear, in my previous job, the Company where I worked used to apply RFID in the documents so as to be able to detect them quickly...therefore the way how the introduction is presenting the problem is not giving to me the idea of a real problem to solve.

• • • According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a complete revision of the introduction and added a section for related works published, including the information in question.

Approach

This section is basically their prototype and must be moved to Section 3.

Before discussing this section, authors should add a new section with the problem to solve, basically moving Figure 1 in this new section where they explain the problem they need to solve.

I want to explain that the problem must be described with scientific rigour therefore authors MUST explain what novelties they are introducing with respect to the state of the art.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a complete revision of the introduction and added a section for related works published, including the information in question.

As far the issue that I see in this current section, below my comments:

5) Line 95 a reference is missing.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we check and found the problem in the references now is fixed.

6) They discuss the concept of smart contract (line 101) without giving any contest before. I am not saying to introduce a section regarding the blockchain technology, but at least in the approach they should provide a section with the Methodology where they explain the methodology and the tools they want to use (and why also with respect to the state of the art). In other words, I would rephrase the title because in the Scenario they are explaining the features of the Blockchain...but not the reasons for using it in the asset management applications.

7) Authors should also refer to relevant literature regarding NFT and DAPP.

- Bellagarda, Jagger, and Adnan M. Abu-Mahfouz. "Connect2NFT: A Web-Based, Blockchain Enabled NFT Application with the Aim of Reducing Fraud and Ensuring Authenticated Social, Non-Human Verified Digital Identity." Mathematics 10, no. 21 (2022): 3934.

- Rasolroveicy, Mohammadreza, and Marios Fokaefs. "Performance and Cost Evaluation of Public Blockchain: An NFT Marketplace Case Study." In 2022 4th Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services (BRAINS), pp. 79-86. IEEE, 2022.

- Chiacchio, F., D’Urso, D., Oliveri, L. M., Spitaleri, A., Spampinato, C., & Giordano, D. (2022). A Non-Fungible Token Solution for the Track and Trace of Pharmaceutical Supply Chain. Applied Sciences, 12(8), 4019.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a complete revision of the introduction and added a section for related works published, including the information in question.

-

Results and analysis

8) it becomes clear only now that authors are giving also some evaluation and economics of their prototype (Figure 13-16). But, as I can see it is not very well developed and it is not clear how the costs can increase in a real production environment.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we updated figures 13 and 14 to be more clear.

Discussion

9) The discussion is an interesting new section where authors explain the different challenges and questions raised in their study.

Since it contains also some information about the topics discussed in the paper with their current issues, it can be used also to rewrite the introduction section and give to the readers a context which is currently missing.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a revision of the discussion section, complementing this information.

Conclusions

10) This section is very poor and must be rewritten to explain what findings have been reported, the improvements with respect to the state of the art and future challenges.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a revision of the conclusions section.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

 Here by use of  proof-of-concept system the proposed model can be much more flexible and can be used in producing complex systems. Discussion section is good. This kind of real-time implemented works are very good.

But security analysis is not done properly,  so in discussion section it can be added.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We thank you for your time. Also, thank you for your valuable and detailed review of our paper. We ordered and answered each of your points below, and in the reviewed paper version. For clarity, the comments are included below listed with our comments on each issue listed in between. Additionally, we made a complete revision of the English redaction.

Here by use of proof-of-concept system the proposed model can be much more flexible and can be used in producing complex systems. Discussion section is good. This kind of real-time implemented works are very good.

But security analysis is not done properly, so in discussion section it can be added.

• According to the reviewer's suggestion, we make a revision of the discussion section, complementing this information.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

authors have addressed all comments in the revision. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Paper can be accepted

Reviewer 4 Report

Now required changes are done. Its a good contribution.