PnV: An Efficient Parallel Consensus Protocol Integrating Proof and Voting

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Very interesting article with academic contribution.

Here are some recommendations to increase the robustness of the text:

1) Highlight again the following statement as the main objective of the paper in chapter 1, as This paper aims to present PnV, an efficient Parallel fusion protocol integrating Proof-based and Voting-based consensus features. It enhances the data structure, consensus process, transaction allocation, and timeout handling mechanisms to enable concurrent block generation by multiple nodes within a consensus round.

2) Chapter 2 of the text appears to be theoretical foundation, therefore, the texts must be referenced, such as figure 1, figure 2 and others.

3) The equations presented in lines 234 to 236 must be highlighted and indexed, with references.

4) The conclusion must be more complete, including a comparative discussion on the performance of an e-voting system over traditional ones or other proposals, to confirm its efficiency, security, traceability and assured inviolability.

5) Change the chapter title to Research Method and Experiment

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is an enhancement of a previous work that the authors state that have been publish in a conference (See line 74).

Some suggestions to improve the overall manuscript.

Authors should avoid the use of underlined text in the abstract.

Line 42-45: references should be provided to justify the proof-based consensus protocols problems.

Line 55: some details about how the elected team is selected/created should also be mentioned, since it is one of the main features of the proposed consensus mechanism.

Line 70: the superior scalability of the fusion consensus mechanism should be properly referenced. Therefore, include some references.

Line 78: reference missing to Golang.

Line 81: “ (…) and other crucial mechanisms.” It should be introduced here.

Authors should provide a brief overview at the beginning of section 2, before section 2.1.

Section 2.1 should have a diagram categorizing the different types and consensus protocols.

The concept of primary and replica node in the consensus protocol should be properly explained.

Line 112: missing reference to Byzantine protocol.

Line 126: due to its importance the concept of bookkeepers should be properly addressed and explained.

Line 145: the genesis block is not explained.

Section 3.1. could be enhanced with an algorithm/flow chat providing more details about the steps of each action explained in Figure 1.

Equation 1 is not referenced in the text.

An algorithm should be included in section 4.

Section 6:

More details about the implementation should be provided. Blockchain used, programming language, etc..

Conclusions are too short. They could be more explored.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors did a good job in the revision of this new version of the manuscript. Their efforts are appreciated.
They have added relevant information and improved, especially the firsts chapters. References where also improved. The changes reflected in the improvement of the manuscript. Therefore, the revised manuscript is correct and technically sound.
Concluding, I agree again with the publication of this manuscript.