## 3 Methodology  
There are currently no existing BBSM systems, meaning that there is no data on the implementation of such systems available for analysis. There are multiple reasons for this, including:  
* The disruptiveness of the concept;
* The low maturity of the technology;
* The high risk of joining the system. The primary reason is the disruptiveness of the BBSM concept compared to the traditional manufacturing systems employed in the real world. There do not yet exist any business models or known good practices to guide manufacturing companies within such a system. In order for a manufacturing company to join a BBSM system, it must have a high level of digitalization, which introduces high investment costs. Furthermore, there do not exist any standardized hardware and software tools that would enable the faster establishment of the infrastructure required for the participation of manufacturing companies. The necessary changes to existing manufacturing systems in terms of technological infrastructure and economic models present great risks, as the operation of the manufacturing system would be obstructed during the transition phase. Furthermore, in the initial phase of setting up the BBSM system, the participants do not have as much benefit as when the system is adopted by a larger group of manufacturers. Until the system reaches a critical mass of users, resource sharing cannot take full effect. To convince users to join the system, there is a need for multiple smaller cases and analyses that show the concept to be feasible and work well. One of the primary reasons for the lack of acceptance and implementation of blockchain-based applications in industry is the scalability limitations of blockchain technology [46]. Conducting an exploratory analysis of the scalability limitations of blockchain technology on the operation of BBSM systems can yield further insights and guidelines for implementing such systems. However, due to the non-existence of any such systems, there are no real data available for analysis. Furthermore, there does not exist any other blockchain-based manufacturing system which could provide similar of data on the operation of such a system. Another difficulty in analyzing the BBSM concept is that while all existing analyses of the concept have used a simulation environment to model the system, each time it has been modeled differently, without any uniform standard model. **Experimental approach:** In experimental economics, in cases where it is not possible to apply the experimental methodology directly to an existing system, experiments are commonly conducted in the form of virtual games [47; 48; 49]. Mapping the properties of a system into a virtual environment enables the simple creation of situations that would occur in reality. This approach can provide a basic understanding of the observed phenomena under diverse conditions. Experimental findings can function as a rigorous empirical pre-test of economic theory before conducting tests with field data [50]. This form of experimentation has been employed to investigate diverse issues in the manufacturing domain. For example, experiments related to decision-making have been conducted with human subjects, then further supported by experiments with multi-agent simulations [51; 52]. Another study explored the emergence and behavior of a network in a distributed manufacturing environment where none of the components held information concerning the entire state of the system [53]. A similar approach to that above described is selected in the presented study. In order to conduct our analysis, we employed the presented methodology (Figure 1). Implementation of a BBSM system in a virtual environment was carried out first. Human decisions are a part of BBSM systems, and affect how the system responds to the scalability limitations of the blockchain.