## 4 Discussion
### Performance Metrics for Evaluating the Platform's Effectiveness
#### 4.3.2 Scalability and Cost Efficiency  
SPARK-IT also prioritizes system efficiency and scalability. Transaction throughput is tracked by measuring the number of mentorship requests, proposal submissions, and confirmed collaborations processed per second, ensuring the platform remains responsive under high demand. System latency is continuously analyzed to maintain sub-second re \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{p{142.3 pt} p{142.3 pt} p{142.3 pt}} \hline \hline
**Strengths** & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Weaknesses**} \\ \hline \(\bullet\) & **Matchmaking:** The AI based recommendation system, which takes into account both professional information and reputation scores, is considered a strong point. & \(\bullet\) & **Documentation Overhead:** Increased workload from detailed process documentation was a concern among the stakeholders. The final documents that the mentor has to upload can be perceived as unnecessary overhead. & \(\bullet\) \\ \(\bullet\) & **In protection:** The platform provides the opportunity to sign an NDA and stores that NDA in a secure environment. The system cannot access sensitive information, which builds trust. & \(\bullet\) & **Resource Instinveness:** Requires additional staffing and technological investments. \\ \(\bullet\) & **User Centie Design:** Feedback loops and iterative enhancements increase the chances for the system to succeed. & \(\bullet\) & **Unfimilarity with Blockchain:** Users can find it difficult to use web3 wallets and blockchain. \\ \(\bullet\) & **Data-Driven Approach:** SPARK-IT combines quantitative metrics (KPIs) with qualitative feedback. & \(\bullet\) & **Long-Term Monitoring:** The platform does not provide the opportunity for long-term monitoring of a project after a collaboration with a mentor. \\ \hline \multicolumn{2}{p{142.3 pt}}{**Opportunities**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Threats**} \\ \hline \(\bullet\) & **Innovative Business Model:** The system innovates current approaches and relatively few competitors have been identified. & \(\bullet\) & **Adoption Resistance:** Stakeholders might not be prepared to use the technological stack. \\ \(\bullet\) & **Partnerships:** The project has a great potential to form alliances with academic institutions, industry leaders, and venture capital firms. & \(\bullet\) & **Budgetary Constraints:** Limited resources could restrict technology implementation. \\ \(\bullet\) & **Multiple Revenue Streams:** There are multiple monetization models that could be implemented, such as subscriptions, premium services, and data analytics offerings. & \(\bullet\) & **Risk of Over-Documentation:** Excessive focus on documentation may hinder creative engagement. \\ \(\bullet\) & **Open-Source:** Open-source initiatives are generally regarded & & \(\bullet\) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: SWOT analysis of the SPARK-IT project. sponse times for matchmaking queries, proposal evaluations, and encrypted data retrieval from decentralized storage. Additionally, blockchain-related operations, such as executing smart contracts for mentor compensation and verifying non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), are optimized to minimize processing delays. Together, these metrics provide a comprehensive assessment of SPARK-IT's reliability, scalability, and impact. This ensures it effectively meets the needs of innovators and experts in a competitive innovation environment. Using our own permissioned blockchain has the significant advantage of eliminating gas fees entirely. On a public blockchain network like Ethereum, however, a complete interaction between an innovator and an expert, comprising the creation of a business project, proposal submission, NDA signing, expert association, reward token locking and disbursement, reputation token transfer, and wrapped token bridge operations, would incur substantial transaction costs. Under the current network condition, the average gas price is 40 Gwei and ETH is at approximately USD 1600 at the time of writing.