MetaChain: A Novel Blockchain-based Framework for Metaverse Applications

TL;DR

MetaChain introduces a blockchain-based framework that enhances Metaverse applications by improving scalability, resource management, and user incentives through smart contracts, sharding, and game-theoretic mechanisms.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel blockchain framework with a sharding scheme and incentive mechanism specifically designed for Metaverse applications.

Findings

The incentive mechanism effectively attracts more users and resources.

The sharding scheme improves blockchain scalability for Metaverse needs.

Numerical experiments demonstrate the impact of user behavior and incentives.

Abstract

Metaverse has recently attracted paramount attention due to its potential for future Internet. However, to fully realize such potential, Metaverse applications have to overcome various challenges such as massive resource demands, interoperability among applications, and security and privacy concerns. In this paper, we propose MetaChain, a novel blockchain-based framework to address emerging challenges for the development of Metaverse applications. In particular, by utilizing the smart contract mechanism, MetaChain can effectively manage and automate complex interactions among the Metaverse Service Provider (MSP) and the Metaverse users (MUs). In addition, to allow the MSP to efficiently allocate its resources for Metaverse applications and MUs' demands, we design a novel sharding scheme to improve the underlying blockchain's scalability. Moreover, to leverage MUs' resources as well as to attract more MUs to support Metaverse operations, we develop an incentive mechanism using the Stackelberg game theory that rewards MUs' contributions to the Metaverse. Through numerical experiments, we clearly show the impacts of the MUs' behaviors and how the incentive mechanism can attract more MUs and resources to the Metaverse.