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Metaverse for Social Good: A University Campus Prototype
Haihan Duan, Jiaye Li, Sizheng Fan, Zhonghao Lin, Xiao Wu, Wei Cai
TL;DR
The paper responds to limited academic guidance for a rapidly developing metaverse whose applications and architecture remain insufficiently organized. It reviews social-good applications, proposes a three-layer architecture, surveys historical and novel examples, and presents a blockchain-driven university-campus prototype. The resulting framework and prototype are intended to organize metaverse development and support future social experiments and studies.
Problem
Academic discussion has not kept pace with industry-driven metaverse development, while existing surveys omit mature blockchain-related applications and architecture lacks a consistent definition.
Method
The paper reviews representative social-good applications, proposes infrastructure, interaction, and ecosystem layers, characterizes metaverse examples, and implements a blockchain-driven CUHKSZ campus prototype.
Results
The paper presents a macro architecture, a timeline and feature table of representative metaverse examples, and an implemented CUHKSZ Metaverse prototype for demonstration and future research.
Takeaways & Limitations
The paper frames the metaverse as a potential human-centered environment for accessibility, diversity, equality, and humanity, while directing attention toward further study.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
In recent years, the metaverse has attracted enormous attention from around the world with the development of related technologies. The expected metaverse should be a realistic society with more direct and physical interactions, while the concepts of race, gender, and even physical disability would be weakened, which would be highly beneficial for society. However, the development of metaverse is still in its infancy, with great potential for improvement. Regarding metaverse's huge potential, industry has already come forward with advance preparation, accompanied by feverish investment, but there are few discussions about metaverse in academia to scientifically guide its development. In this paper, we highlight the representative applications for social good. Then we propose a three-layer metaverse architecture from a macro perspective, containing infrastructure, interaction, and ecosystem. Moreover, we journey toward both a historical and novel metaverse with a detailed timeline and table of specific attributes. Lastly, we illustrate our implemented blockchain-driven metaverse prototype of a university campus and discuss the prototype design and insights.
1 INTRODUCTION
The paper addresses gaps in academic guidance for a rapidly advancing metaverse by reviewing applications, proposing a macro-level architecture, and implementing a blockchain-driven campus prototype.
- Motivation: Multimedia advances alone cannot ensure a transparent, stable, and sustainable digital economy because centralized operators control digital properties.Blockchain-based decentralized ledgers and smart contracts are presented as a potential foundation for unique, persistent, and tradable digital properties.
- Motivation: Industry investment and applications, including The Sandbox, Roblox, and NVIDIA Omniverse, are accelerating metaverse development and exposing the need for academic guidance.The Sandbox obtained more than $2 million in financing in 2020, while Roblox exceeded $40 billion in value at its peak.
- Research gap: Existing surveys omit many mature blockchain-related applications and provide limited discussion of metaverse architecture.These omissions motivate a more systematic treatment of applications and architecture.
- Contributions: The paper proposes a three-layer metaverse architecture comprising infrastructure, interaction, and ecosystem, and raises open research questions for its components.The architecture is presented from a macro perspective and includes a decentralized blockchain-based ecosystem as a novel development trend.
- Contributions: The authors review representative metaverse applications, characterize their attributes, and implement a blockchain-driven CUHKSZ campus prototype for continuing user studies.The prototype is described as an ongoing system whose construction and user studies support further research.
2 METAVERSE FOR SOCIAL GOOD
The paper presents the metaverse as a human-centered computing environment that may support accessibility, diversity, equality, and humanity through virtual participation, customized avatars, governance, and cultural preservation.
- Accessibility: The metaverse may improve accessibility by enabling virtual forms of events when geography and pandemic restrictions obstruct physical communication and cooperation.The passage describes geographical distance as a cost-increasing obstacle and notes that many events were converted to virtual form during COVID-19.
- Diversity: Unlimited extension space and seamless scene transformation allow the metaverse to combine diverse scenarios that the physically constrained world cannot accommodate in one place.Examples include virtual cultural, educational, and civic activities.
- Equality: Customized avatars and decentralized governance mechanisms can support fair participation by allowing users to exercise power and vote on policies.Decentraland’s DAO lets users propose and vote on policies governing the world, while Axie Infinity uses a decentralized organization mechanism.
- Humanity: Digital reconstruction in metaverse environments can support cultural communication and protection for fragile physical heritage.Examples include Ubisoft’s 3D reconstruction of Notre Dame de Paris and voxel reconstructions of Chinese cultural relics in Minecraft.
3 ARCHITECTURE OF THE METAVERSE
The paper proposes a macro-level metaverse architecture with infrastructure, interaction, and ecosystem layers spanning physical and virtual worlds. It uses these layers to organize components, open research questions, and ecosystem functions including UGC, economics, and AI.
- Architecture overview: The proposed architecture has three layers, from bottom to top: infrastructure, interaction, and ecosystem.It is intended as a macro-level alternative to more granular industry value-chain architectures.
- Architecture overview: The architecture crosses from the physical world to the virtual world, with the three layers positioned at their intersection.The figure distinguishes the physical and virtual worlds while placing infrastructure, interaction, and ecosystem between them.
- Scope: The architecture is explicitly scoped: listed components are emphasized for the paper’s limited purpose, while other layer components are not covered.The paper states that details and open research questions for the proposed layers are discussed in subsequent subsections.
- 3.1 Infrastructure: Infrastructure supports virtual-world operation through computation, communication, blockchain, and storage.Open questions concern computational devices, resource coordination, large-scale data transmission, consensus, and storage allocation.
- 3.2 Interaction: Interaction bridges physical and virtual worlds through immersive experience, digital twins, and content creation.The paper identifies open questions about mapping physical objects, controlling devices, reconstructing objects, and enabling amateur content creation.
- 3.3 Ecosystem: The ecosystem layer comprises UGC, economics, and AI, supporting user-created content, decentralized economic activity, and AI-driven NPCs.Blockchain-based NFTs address UGC ownership, while smart contracts and fungible tokens support metaverse economic models.
4 JOURNEY TOWARDS THE METAVERSE
The paper traces metaverse development from text-based interactive games to 3D virtual worlds, MMO video games, and blockchain-supported decentralized worlds. It compares representative examples by features and reports increasing ecosystem richness and interactive sophistication over time.
- Historical development: Early metaverse forerunners included text-based interactive games such as MUDs and MUSHs, enabling real-time textual communication and collaborative play.Colossal Cave Adventure exemplified text-command movement and interaction during 1975–1977.
- Historical development: Advances in computing and graphics in the 1990s produced 3D virtual worlds with avatars, open-ended socialization, user-created content, and text-and-voice communication.These worlds expanded interaction beyond the text-based systems of earlier metaverse prototypes.
- Modern prototypes: MMO video games became a popular metaverse form by combining large-scale interaction in sophisticated 3D environments with communication, UGC, economies, and VR/AR.Representative examples include Second Life, Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite.
- Modern prototypes: Blockchain-supported decentralized virtual worlds introduced built-in economies in which virtual land, assets, avatars, wearables, and names could be traded.Decentraland is described as having a creator economic system that incentivizes user-generated scenes, artworks, challenges, and buildings.
- Feature comparison: The paper summarizes seven metaverse features: blockchain, VR/AR, digital twins, UGC creator, UGC, economics, and AI.Computation, communication, and storage are treated as fundamentals rather than listed features.
- Feature comparison: Across development stages, UGC and its creator characterize pioneering examples, while economics and AI emerge later and become near-essential in MMO video games.VR/AR and digital twins also expand interactive modalities in representative MMO examples.
5 CAMPUS METAVERSE PROTOTYPE
The paper presents CUHKSZ Metaverse as an early-stage, blockchain-driven campus prototype for interactive experiences and future social experiments.
- The prototype links students’ real-world actions with corresponding effects in the virtual campus, and vice versa.
- Figure 3 shows a corner of the CUHKSZ Metaverse through the implemented Metaverse Observer.
5.1 Infrastructure
The CUHKSZ Metaverse is built as a cross-platform system intended to support communication and interaction among users across devices and networks.
- The system is developed with Unity and can be deployed on smartphones, PCs, and browser-based cloud streaming.
- The development platform supports communication and interaction among thousands of users using cable and mobile networks.
- Blockchain with smart contracts is an important part of the prototype’s infrastructure.
5.2 Interaction
The interaction layer supports cross-platform viewing, location-based sensing, and user-generated content creation assisted by an accessible voxel editor and AI technologies.
- 5.2 Interaction: The Metaverse Viewer offers first-person and third-person perspectives and is designed for connection through smartphones, PCs, and cloud streaming.
- 5.2 Interaction: The current prototype uses localization information as sensing input, including GPS-based incentives for students who voluntarily report their locations.
- 5.2 Interaction: Figure 4 represents the interaction layer of the CUHKSZ Metaverse.
- 5.2.3 Content Creation: An easy-to-use voxel editor enables untrained users to create customized 3D items within minutes.
- 5.2.3 Content Creation: AI-based generative technologies assist users by generating 3D items from voxels they create.
5.3 Ecosystem
The ecosystem layer uses blockchain-based tokens, delegated voting, user-generated content, and event observation to support participation, governance, and activity discovery.
- 5.3 Ecosystem: Blockchain-based tokens represent the community’s monetary system and can be claimed continuously through smart contracts under predefined rules.
- 5.3.2 Autonomous Governance: A Delegated Proof of Stake voting protocol governs proposals to revise predefined rules, including the planned election of a virtual student committee.
- 5.3 Ecosystem: Figure 5 represents the ecosystem layer of the CUHKSZ Metaverse.
- 5.3.2 Autonomous Governance: Autonomous governance supports normal operation and informs subsequent iterations of the CUHKSZ Metaverse.
- 5.3.1 Token-Driven Ecosystem: Residents can trade user-generated content, wear it as ornaments, display it in rooms, or promote it through rented virtual-campus billboards.
- 5.3 Ecosystem: The AI-driven Metaverse Observer analyzes real-time operation data and recommends events based partly on user flow or official approval.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The paper concludes by presenting a three-layer metaverse architecture, tracing representative developments, and illustrating a blockchain-driven university campus prototype. It frames the metaverse as beneficial for accessibility, diversity, equality, and humanity while identifying continuing research needs.
- The proposed metaverse architecture organizes key components into infrastructure, interaction, and ecosystem layers and summarizes open research questions for each component.
- The paper traces pioneering and novel metaverse examples using a release-time timeline and a table of representative features.
- The implemented blockchain-driven CUHKSZ Metaverse prototype illustrates a university campus application intended to enrich student and faculty campus life.
- Representative applications reflect human-centered computing and are described as beneficial for accessibility, diversity, equality, and humanity.
- The authors plan to improve the prototype and continue metaverse-related studies because many research topics remain imperative to study.