PONE-D-20-20436

Inside the Decentralised Casino: A Longitudinal Study of Actual Cryptocurrency Gambling Transactions

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Scholten,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

5. Review Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1:

Minor:

1.     Improve language especially in abstract.

2.     Include graphical diagrams to enhance understandability.

3.     A comparative graph or table with existing analysis of similar type on similar apps have to be included in result portion.

Major: The statistics of data collected from application like Etheroll, and Dice2Win is not shown and the span over which data is collected.

1.     The summary of data and the periods over which data has been collected require a graphical representation before the final analysis is presented.

2.     The design of algorithm/method which conducted the analysis is not shown in any form (textual or graphical).

3.     Analysis required to be interlinked with the suggested improvements and detected issues which can help improve the online gambling through games. The Author has to lead readers to an application analysis.

Reviewer #2:

This study explores decentralized gambling that users use Ethereum cryptocurrency to cover their identities. They analyzed 2,232,741 transactions from 24,234 unique addresses. The results of study shows that the use of these applications as a research platform, specically for large scale longitudinal in-vivodata analysis.

Reviewer #3:

The research article tracks the users' behavior in decentralized gambling applications. The domain of application is considered new and promising. The data was sufficient to apply behavioral measures to reach the conclusion and the statistical analysis has been performed appropriately. The manuscript was well written.

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review1 22jul20 PONE-D-20-20436.pdf

Inside the Decentralised Casino: A Longitudinal Study of Actual Cryptocurrency Gambling Transactions

PONE-D-20-20436R1

Dear Dr. Scholten,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

He Debiao

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Authors have already addressed all the concerns. Overall manuscript structure has been enhanced and readibility has been improved significally

Reviewer #3: Thank you for considering my comments. The manuscript became better after the modifications.

However, the data underlying the findings has not been made available. As it sends an access request to the owner.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Malik Muhammad Ali Shahid

Reviewer #3: Yes: Randa Aljably