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All One Needs to Know about Metaverse: A Complete Survey on Technological Singularity, Virtual Ecosystem, and Research Agenda

Lik-Hang Lee, Tristan Braud, Pengyuan Zhou, Lin Wang, Dianlei Xu, Zijun Lin, Abhishek Kumar, Carlos Bermejo, Pan Hui

arXiv:2110.05352v3cs.CY

TL;DR

The paper addresses the gap between fragmented, non-perpetual virtual environments and the metaverse vision of a persistent, shared physical-digital realm. It develops a comprehensive survey framework spanning enabling technologies and ecosystem factors, reviews current research, and proposes a research agenda. The survey identifies edge computing, XR, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and related technologies as enablers while highlighting performance, privacy, security, and market-governance challenges.

  • Problem

    Existing cyberspace applications do not generally provide the shared, open, and perpetual physical-digital experience envisioned for the metaverse.

  • Method

    The paper surveys metaverse research and organizes fourteen topics into technological enablers and ecosystem considerations, then proposes research challenges and opportunities.

  • Results

    The survey presents a technological framework connecting enablers such as edge computing, XR, and artificial intelligence with metaverse development and ecosystem requirements.

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    Realizing the metaverse requires coordinated progress across technologies, user-centered ecosystem factors, and research challenges rather than relying on existing virtual environments alone.

Abstract

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Since the popularisation of the Internet in the 1990s, the cyberspace has kept evolving. We have created various computer-mediated virtual environments including social networks, video conferencing, virtual 3D worlds (e.g., VR Chat), augmented reality applications (e.g., Pokemon Go), and Non-Fungible Token Games (e.g., Upland). Such virtual environments, albeit non-perpetual and unconnected, have bought us various degrees of digital transformation. The term `metaverse' has been coined to further facilitate the digital transformation in every aspect of our physical lives. At the core of the metaverse stands the vision of an immersive Internet as a gigantic, unified, persistent, and shared realm. While the metaverse may seem futuristic, catalysed by emerging technologies such as Extended Reality, 5G, and Artificial Intelligence, the digital `big bang' of our cyberspace is not far away. This survey paper presents the first effort to offer a comprehensive framework that examines the latest metaverse development under the dimensions of state-of-the-art technologies and metaverse ecosystems, and illustrates the possibility of the digital `big bang'. First, technologies are the enablers that drive the transition from the current Internet to the metaverse. We thus examine eight enabling technologies rigorously - Extended Reality, User Interactivity (Human-Computer Interaction), Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Computer Vision, IoT and Robotics, Edge and Cloud computing, and Future Mobile Networks. In terms of applications, the metaverse ecosystem allows human users to live and play within a self-sustaining, persistent, and shared realm. Therefore, we discuss six user-centric factors -- Avatar, Content Creation, Virtual Economy, Social Acceptability, Security and Privacy, and Trust and Accountability. Finally, we propose a concrete research agenda for the development of the metaverse.

I. INTRODUCTION

The paper frames the metaverse as a persistent, shared physical-digital environment and argues that current virtual applications remain fragmented or temporary. It proposes a technology-and-ecosystem framework, reviews enabling technologies, and identifies research challenges for progressing toward this vision.

  • The metaverse is conceived as a virtual environment blending physical and digital worlds through the convergence of Internet, Web, and Extended Reality technologies.
  • Metaverse development proceeds through digital twins, digital natives, and eventual co-existence of physical-virtual reality.Digital twins duplicate physical entities and reflect their properties through connected data; later stages emphasize native content creation and physical-world interaction.
  • Existing applications only partially approach the metaverse because many lack physical properties, rich engagement, persistence, interoperability, or connections between virtual and physical worlds.VR social spaces can vanish after gatherings, while AR game objects may not reflect digital-twin principles.
  • The survey proposes a technological framework, reviews state-of-the-art enablers, and identifies gaps between current technologies and metaverse requirements.Its stated enablers include edge computing, XR, and artificial intelligence, alongside broader technological and ecosystem dimensions.
  • The review covers fourteen interdisciplinary topics organized around technology and ecosystem aspects to support research on metaverse development.The literature review examines relevant work from 2012 to 2021 and presents research challenges and opportunities.

III. FRAMEWORK

The framework organizes the metaverse around eight technological pillars that support a user-centered ecosystem. It explains how XR and interaction techniques connect users to virtual activities, while computing, sensing, and governance technologies support performance and participation.

  • Framework overview: The framework divides fourteen focused areas into technology and ecosystem categories, with technology supporting the metaverse as a large-scale application.
  • Technology: Eight technological pillars include XR, user interactivity, computer vision, artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics and IoT, edge and cloud computing, and future mobile networks.
  • Technology: Edge computing handles delay-sensitive and bandwidth-hungry applications near users, while cloud computing provides scalable computational power and storage.Combining edge- and cloud-based services is presented as a way to achieve application-performance synergy.
  • Ecosystem: The ecosystem centers on avatars, collective activities, content creation, virtual economy, social acceptability, security and privacy, and trust and accountability.
  • Extended Reality: XR spans realities from fully synthetic VR to AR, MR, and holographic technologies, enabling interaction with virtual entities across physical and digital worlds.The survey limits its discussion to four primary reality types and presents XR as a bridge between virtual entities and the physical world.
  • Augmented Reality: AR interaction research focuses on seamless, lightweight manipulation of overlaid digital entities, including freehand techniques such as pinch gestures and ray casting.
  • Augmented Reality: Metaverse content can be displayed through public large displays, wearable pico-projectors, smartphones, handheld touchscreens, ceiling projectors, and tabletops.

C. Mixed Reality (MR)

Mixed reality is positioned between augmented and virtual reality, enabling interaction between virtual entities and physical environments. The section presents MR as a starting point for the metaverse while identifying display, mobility, and interaction constraints.

  • C. Mixed Reality (MR): MR occupies an intermediate position between AR and VR and supports interaction with virtual entities in physical environments.Its definitions commonly emphasize environmental understanding and interaction between virtual and tangible objects.
  • D. Large Display, Pico-Projector, Holography: Holography is divided into reflection-based displays that reproduce colourful objects and laser-driven displays that can produce tactile sensations on skin.Current volumetric displays remain limited by low resolution, display size, and device mobility.
  • C. Mixed Reality (MR): The paper treats MR as a starting point for the metaverse, beginning with digital twins and extending toward content that merges with physical surroundings across space and time.Existing MR prototypes pursue realism, presence, and empathetic physical spaces.
  • C. Mixed Reality (MR): Seamless metaverse interaction requires diverse input channels, including freehand, on-body, digital-textile, and mobile-headset interfaces.Freehand interaction is intuitive but technically demanding because computer-vision recognition requires sufficient computational resources and low latency.
  • B. New Human Visions via Mobile Headsets: AR/MR headsets overlay virtual content on physical environments, but narrow fields of view can reduce immersion, usability, task performance, and awareness of surrounding dangers.The first-generation Microsoft HoloLens is described as having a 30 X 17-degree FOV, while the second generation reaches 43 X 29 degrees.

C. The importance of Feedback Cues

Feedback cues support realistic and effective interaction with virtual objects, while haptic telepresence introduces demanding synchronization and network requirements. The section connects multimodal feedback to user performance, inclusiveness, and metaverse-connected applications.

  • C. The importance of Feedback Cues: Haptic devices support interaction with tangible and virtual objects through mechanisms including exoskeletons, gloves, air-jets, ultrasounds, and lasers.These devices are presented as part of the feedback infrastructure for virtual environments and telepresence.
  • C. The importance of Feedback Cues: Visual, auditory, and haptic feedback can improve user experience, responsiveness, task accuracy, and virtual-object acquisition efficiency.The paper also identifies haptic feedback as potentially beneficial for visually impaired users and calls for exploring smell and taste modalities.
  • D. Telepresence: 60% reduction of the bandwidth is reported for Deadband compression techniques applied to haptic data transmission.The technique targets cutaneous haptic feedback and manages the just-noticeable difference to preserve distinguishable sensations.
  • D. Telepresence: Unlimited concurrent metaverse users would make network requirements extremely demanding, with latency threatening the effectiveness of haptic stimuli and realism.The paper cites 1 ms as the expected maximum latency for the Tactile Internet and reports 19.18 ms glass-to-glass latency for a smartphone video-overlay loop.
  • IoT and Connected Applications: AR/VR/MR overlays can present information and enable natural-gesture control of IoT devices through icons, menus, and virtual 3D objects.Connected vehicles and systems such as I2V illustrate metaverse links between physical and virtual environments.

C. Robots with Virtual Environments

Virtual environments connect robots with metaverse users by visualising robot operations, supporting natural interaction, and providing digital twins as testing grounds for robot designs.

  • Robot interaction: AR, VR, and MR can open communication channels between robots and virtual environments by visualising robot content.Industrial applications use these environments for task-scenario and safety analysis, helping users build trust and confidence in robots.
  • Robot interaction: Mixed reality is used as a communication interface with humanoids, while robots may serve as companions, services drones, inspectors, guardians, or other social devices.
  • Digital twins: Digital twins and metaverse environments can provide virtual testing grounds for new robot designs and reshape users’ perceptions of collaborative robots.
  • Artificial intelligence: Artificial intelligence is reviewed for automatic digital twins, computer agents, and autonomous avatars in the metaverse.
  • Digital twins: Digital models replicate physical entities, digital shadows change with them, and digital twins allow mutual influence between physical and virtual worlds.
  • Computer agents: Finite state machines model computer-agent behaviour through states, conditions, actions, and next states.

C. Autonomy of Avatar

Avatar autonomy uses machine learning to represent players’ behaviours when they are absent, while blockchain supports distributed storage, privacy, transactions, and data sharing across metaverse systems.

  • Avatar autonomy: Avatars are digital representations through which players interact with other players or computer agents, but common games often make avatars highly similar.
  • Avatar autonomy: Generative adversarial networks learn training-data distributions to generate data with similar distributions.
  • Avatar autonomy: Drivatars learn players’ driving styles from driving data and let other users race their virtual players when the original players are absent.
  • Avatar autonomy: Neural networks outperformed decision trees and Naive Bayes when learning players’ shooting styles in a first-person shooter game.
  • Avatar autonomy: Reinforcement learning performed much better than a neural network on the same fighting-game data for decision-making.
  • Blockchain: Blockchain distributes data across chronologically linked blocks that participating nodes store locally and synchronise through consensus.

B. Data sharing

Metaverse data sharing requires distributed, secure interoperability across physical and digital environments, while computer vision supplies localisation, mapping, and tracking foundations for XR interaction.

  • Data sharing: Blockchain storage encrypts data, relocates it to anonymous nodes, and records data locations across participating nodes.
  • Data sharing: Blockchain key-management and proxy re-encryption mechanisms support safer sharing and access tracking for stored data.
  • Data sharing: Blockchain can enable companies to share data securely, including separate business uses of common customer data.
  • Physical–digital connections: Digital twins connect physical and digital environments, requiring understanding of human activities that may drive avatar behaviour.
  • Visual localisation and mapping: Visual SLAM estimates device motion and reconstructs unknown environments for metaverse spatial understanding.
  • Visual localisation and mapping: Visual SLAM typically performs feature extraction, 2D-to-3D mapping, and close-loop detection.
  • Visual localisation and mapping: Close-loop detection identifies previously observed views so accumulated camera-motion errors can be estimated and geometrically consistent maps recovered.
  • Visual localisation and mapping: Current visual SLAM supports spatial understanding, but metaverse environments still require integration of virtual objects with real environments and accurate object registration.

1) Human Pose Tracking:

Human pose, eye tracking, and scene understanding support avatar control and immersive interaction, but metaverse vision systems must handle occlusion, varied conditions, privacy, and real-time constraints.

  • Human pose tracking: Pose-tracking algorithms must handle body-part self-occlusion, multi-user robustness, and highly variable illumination.
  • Human pose tracking: Multi-person tracking additionally must count users, estimate their positions, and group them by classes.
  • Eye tracking: Eye tracking measures gaze geometry and can reduce rendering cost by rendering only content within the user’s view.
  • Scene understanding: Holistic scene understanding links object recognition and action interpretation to interaction with physical and virtual objects.
  • Semantic segmentation and object detection: Semantic segmentation classifies pixels by class, but accurate real-time operation remains challenging at the approximately 60 frames-per-second speed required by AR.
  • Semantic segmentation and object detection: Real-time semantic segmentation has been pursued through image resizing, efficient network design, and transfer learning, with some methods reaching real-time performance in MR.
  • Semantic segmentation and object detection: Metaverse segmentation must distinguish virtual from real pixels and adapt to diverse, complex objects, contents, and avatars.
  • Semantic segmentation and object detection: Face detection must handle synthetic and physical faces, occlusion, pose changes, illumination variation, and stricter privacy requirements in multi-avatar environments.

2) Stereo Depth Estimation:

Metaverse computer vision must align virtual and physical content in real time, requiring accurate depth, action understanding, and image-quality enhancement. Mobile and wearable interfaces add substantial computation and latency constraints.

  • Stereo Depth Estimation: Depth estimation positions virtual content accurately by measuring distances between virtual objects, cameras, and real-world objects.XR must estimate depth across both virtual and real objects so users can place content correctly.
  • Action Recognition: Action recognition enables avatars to interpret other avatars and objects and generate appropriate responses in 3D virtual spaces.Deep learning and sensor fusion support recognition, but metaverse systems require more adaptive and robust algorithms.
  • Image Restoration and Enhancement: Image restoration reconstructs clean images from degradation, while enhancement improves quality for realistic and reliable metaverse interaction.Blur and noise can affect captured body information and generated avatars, especially during rapid movement or adverse visual conditions.
  • Image Restoration and Enhancement: Super-resolution improves XR display quality and influences realism and motion-sickness-related viewing quality.Future work should address resolution in both optical imaging and image formation processes.
  • Computational Constraints: Edge computing is presented as a potential response to the intensive computation and latency demands of mobile and wearable metaverse interfaces.Edge resources can support computation closer to users, while Figure 19 depicts latency from edge to cloud.

A. User Experienced Latency

Metaverse interfaces require latency below human perceptual limits, but mobile computation, offloading, and cloud variability make this difficult. Edge computing and MEC offer complementary approaches for reducing latency, supporting local interaction, and improving privacy, while introducing deployment and trust challenges.

  • Latency Requirements: Motion-to-photon latency must remain below human perceptible limits for seamless interaction with holographic augmentations.MTP latency is the time between a user action and its corresponding display effect.
  • Offloading Trade-offs: Offloading reduces mobile computation and memory burdens but adds networking latency, creating a trade-off between viewport size, streamed content, and responsiveness.Longer latency requires a larger viewport and more streamed content, which can further increase latency.
  • Cloud Limitations: 24 out of 184 countries reliably meet the MTP threshold via wired networks, while only China meets it via wireless networks.Current cloud distribution can provide latency below 100 ms, but reliable threshold compliance remains geographically limited.
  • Edge Benefits: Edge computing reduced latency by 60% over default cloud offloading in LTE cloudlet studies and by at least 80 ms on average in other measurements.These results motivate placing computation, storage, and transmission physically closer to end users.
  • Multi-access Edge Computing: MEC places edge servers at or near cellular base stations to reduce round-trip time and orchestrate real-time interactions among nearby users and devices.The approach supports outdoor metaverse services such as social AR through one-hop packet transmission.
  • Versus Cloud: Edge computing complements cloud solutions by reducing task-offloading latency, enabling local multi-user interaction, and improving privacy and security.Its distributed and heterogeneous architecture also creates additional challenges, including mutual authentication across multiple trust domains.

XI. NETWORK

The metaverse depends on future networks that can deliver massive real-time traffic while meeting stringent latency and reliability requirements. Network design must also incorporate user experience, application context, mobility, and environmental sensing.

  • Network Requirements: Metaverse applications require pervasive network access for remote computation, large databases, automated-system communication, and shared user experiences.Future mobile networking technologies such as 5G and beyond are central to these needs.
  • High Throughput and Low-latency: High-resolution real-time multimedia will require massive bandwidth, while motion-to-photon latency remains a primary driver of user experience.5G capabilities of up to 10Gb/s support applications such as AR/VR, cloud gaming, and connected vehicles, but demand continues to grow.
  • High Throughput and Low-latency: Motion-to-photon latency also depends on sensor capture, computation, operating-system switching, memory operations, and network processing.These pipeline components can remain significant even when wireless-network latency improves.
  • High Throughput and Low-latency: 5G currently barely addresses modern multimedia latency requirements, while URLLC promises 0.5 ms RAN latency without yet providing end-to-end guarantees.No URLLC service has so far been commercially deployed, and future networks must coordinate billions of devices with human applications.
  • User-centric Networking: Quality of Experience metrics aim to estimate user perception, but current models remain application-specific and sensitive to human, system, and contextual factors.Measuring QoE for mobile XR differs substantially from measuring it for cloud gaming or video quality alone.
  • User-centric Networking: User-centric networking can combine application QoE and usage metrics with network conditions to adapt transmitted content, such as reducing video resolution.Mobility and handover also affect network parameters and should be accounted for in user-centric application design.
  • User-centric Networking: Embodied sensors are increasingly shifting from sensing only users toward sensing the users’ broader environments.This expansion creates a network-design concern for metaverse systems that integrate physical and virtual contexts.

XII. AVATAR

Avatars represent users and shape social experiences, while metaverse content creation spans immersive authoring, collaboration, and creator participation. Major open issues include privacy, fairness, censorship measurement, and scalable content governance.

  • XII. AVATAR: Avatars digitally represent users and can influence realism, presence, trust, body ownership, and group satisfaction in metaverse activities.Their effects depend partly on avatar appearance and design.
  • XII. AVATAR: Avatar research should examine in-the-wild behavior, virtual context, avatar-induced behavior, privacy, fairness, and links between virtual and physical worlds.The paper identifies these as six under-explored issues beyond avatar design.
  • XII. AVATAR: Privacy-preserving mechanisms and diverse appearance choices are needed as avatar granularity increases and existing models may bias representation.The paper also highlights displaying avatars in physical environments through tangible devices and social robots.
  • Content Creation: XR, AR, and VR authoring systems help users create digital objects through immersive interfaces, reusable patterns, and lower barriers for non-coders.AI-assisted conversion can further support physical-to-virtual content creation.
  • Content Creation: Metaverse-scale content creation faces bottlenecks in organizing new content, while censorship remains difficult to implement and evaluate across virtual worlds.The paper advocates comprehensive censorship metrics despite having no definitive implementation or mitigation solution.

C. Creator Culture

Creator culture could broaden metaverse participation through collaborative and human-AI content creation, but growing content volumes and economic coordination create governance challenges. Market concentration, limited interoperability, and advertising power further shape the emerging virtual economy.

  • C. Creator Culture: Creator culture envisions avatars collaboratively co-creating virtual assets rather than leaving creation to professional designers.Proposed supports include accessible authoring journeys, incentives, human-AI collaboration, and token-based rewards.
  • C. Creator Culture: Digital content is expected to proliferate, creating unresolved questions about computational capacity, iteration, and preservation of outdated virtual materials.A virtual museum is suggested as one possible preservation mechanism.
  • XIV. VIRTUAL ECONOMY: Virtual economies require internal and external governance to support user activities and content creation.The section organizes economic discussion around governance, real-world market structure, and virtual-world commerce.
  • A. Economic Governance: Player-generated economies demonstrate sustained in-game economic systems, but cryptocurrency-based exchange raises money-supply and deflationary concerns.The paper discusses fractional-reserve banking as a possible mechanism for money creation in the metaverse.
  • B. Oligopolistic Market: High sunk costs may create substantial entry barriers and concentrate metaverse market share among leading technology companies.The paper therefore considers the possibility of an oligopolistic metaverse industry and widespread advertising influence.
  • C. Metaverse Commerce: Existing games lack inter-game user-to-user trade and broader content portability, making interoperability a central challenge for metaverse commerce.Common protocols are presented as a possible foundation for connecting independently developed virtual spaces.

D. Virtual Objects Trading

Virtual-object trading is presented as an essential metaverse ecosystem function that must support cross-world exchange while protecting ownership, originality, and market trust. The section also connects trading to broader social-acceptability concerns, including privacy, fairness, addiction, and cyberbullying.

  • Virtual-object trading: Virtual-object trading should connect stakeholders across different metaverse worlds through shared trading spaces and marketplaces.The proposed vision includes users entering a trading space through portals to exchange virtual objects, while existing games already embed NFT trading.
  • Ownership and authenticity: Counterfeit virtual objects can reduce buyer confidence, discourage high prices, and disincentivise genuine content creators.The section relates this market distortion to Akerlof’s “market of lemons.”
  • Ownership and authenticity: Consumers and content creators are not necessarily best positioned to resolve counterfeit and copyright problems, motivating clearer stakeholder responsibility.Consumers may lack information to validate listings, while creators may be unable to protect themselves from infringement.
  • Social acceptability: Metaverse design must address privacy leakage early because entrenched advertising ecosystems can make later privacy remediation require fundamental redesign.Users may share information without noticing how other parties use it, then react negatively when actual and perceived uses diverge.
  • Social acceptability: Social acceptability also depends on inclusion, algorithmic fairness, addiction risks, and protection against cyberbullying across diverse virtual communities.The section highlights children, elderly and disabled users, fairness controls, immersive-environment addiction, and algorithmic cyberbullying detection and mitigation.

F. Other Social Factors

Other social factors determine whether metaverse devices, identities, environments, and content are acceptable across diverse users. The section emphasizes inclusivity, privacy and safety, identity representation, environmental responsibility, and defenses against manipulation and surveillance.

  • Device and user acceptability: Metaverse devices require further study of public acceptability and user safety because headsets can affect both users and nearby bystanders.The section specifically identifies mobile AR/VR headsets as devices whose social acceptability remains underexamined.
  • Inclusive design: Unified virtual worlds must support cross-generational users because existing social networks have failed to serve multiple demographic cohorts on one platform.The section contrasts younger users’ preferences for Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok with older cohorts’ continued Facebook use.
  • Inclusive design: Avatar acceptability raises unresolved questions about digital copies, including whether posthumous avatars should remain socially and ethically recognized.The discussion connects these questions to virtual immortality and Digital Humanity.
  • Sustainability: Metaverse infrastructure may generate substantial energy consumption and pollution, making green computing and environmental responsibility part of user acceptability.The section links eco-friendliness to users’ affection for and attitudes toward the metaverse.
  • Privacy and security: Wearables and immersive devices can continuously collect personal, behavioral, communication, and biometric data, creating privacy and security risks.Fine-grained movement tracking and reduced awareness of surrounding observers create additional exposure in VR environments.
  • Privacy and security: Multiple avatars and private metaverse copies are proposed to confuse attackers and reduce eavesdropping on users’ activities.Private copies may require API-supported merging of changes back into the main metaverse fabric.
  • Manipulation and governance: Deep-fakes, alternate representations, and dark patterns can make authentic virtual entities difficult to distinguish and influence users toward unwanted decisions.The section describes impersonation for extracting information, virtual assaults, and behaviorally targeted manipulation.

1) Digital twins protection:

Protecting digital twins requires trustworthy information systems while preserving access to the real-world and biometric data that make immersive interaction possible. Trust mechanisms must also account for consent, vulnerable users, overtrust, and the limits of current XR technology.

  • Digital twins protection: Digital twins reproduce physical objects’ appearance, performance, or behavior and require originality protection when implemented in the metaverse.Blockchain is described as verifying new records through a peer-to-peer network before adding them to a cryptographic chain.
  • Digital twins protection: Sensors, wearables, and haptic devices use physical-world and biometric data to control avatars and create more realistic interactions with digital assets.Examples include gyroscopes, gloves, special suits, health monitoring, and sport-activity data.
  • Digital twins protection: The same biometric data that improve immersion create privacy threats and must remain protected while accessible to digital twins and connected devices.This creates a tension between data protection and the operational needs of wearables and other metaverse devices.
  • Trust and accountability: Metaverse adoption depends on users’ willingness to adopt immersive technologies, which is linked to perceived trust and accountability when unintended consequences occur.The paper frames trust and accountability as conditions for realizing potential benefits from technological advances.
  • Trust and accountability: Users may expose their actions to unknown parties during immersive journeys, while presence-based approaches remain uncertain at large scale.The discussed concepts are place illusion and plausibility presence.
  • Trust and accountability: Trust can be supported by situational-awareness displays and trusted execution environments, but trusted computing is not yet fully developed for real-time XR deployment.TEEs provide isolated processing, sealed storage, and remote attestation.
  • Trust and accountability: Overtrust is a concern in XR because third-party misuse of human-like interactions may cause significant physiological trauma.The paper recommends rapid-exit tutorials and information about algorithmic tracking and mediation.
  • Consent and accountability: Consent mechanisms must address minors and vulnerable populations, while conventional consent forms may fail to produce informed choices.Users often skip technical and legal explanations and retain default permission settings.

C. Accountability

Accountability is presented as necessary for trust and for managing the metaverse’s social, technical, and physical consequences. The research agenda therefore links governance, moderation, auditing, liability, sustainability, and integrated technology development.

  • Accountability: Accountability concerns the responsibilities, incentives, and recourse available for those building, deploying, managing, and using metaverse technologies.The paper connects accountability directly to trust and user comfort with adopting these systems.
  • Content moderation: Avatar-based interaction complicates content moderation because platforms must distinguish human users from automated trolls while preserving legitimate expression.The paper identifies violent or extremist content, hate speech, and unlawful content as moderation boundaries.
  • Data accountability: Auditing metaverse data faces difficulty tracing secondary data back to the primary user data from which they were created.This makes it challenging to verify whether later consent withdrawal was respected.
  • Liability and safety: XR-generated overlays can create physical hazards, while regulators continue debating liability for incidents triggered by machines and automated functions.The paper gives life-threatening accidents involving projected information and obscured physical hazards as an example.
  • Research agenda: The metaverse roadmap spans digital twins, digital natives, and eventual physical-virtual coexistence, requiring both technology development and ecosystem establishment.The target environment is described as perpetual, shared, concurrent, and three-dimensional.
  • Research agenda: Realizing the metaverse requires holistic integration among XR, edge and cloud computing, avatars, user interactivity, AI, computer vision, IoT, and networking.The survey explicitly identifies eight focused technologies and emphasizes their interrelated requirements.
  • Research agenda: Current immersive environments provide only partial sensory experiences, motivating research on brain-computer interfaces for fuller interaction with virtual worlds.The paper presents direct brain-device signaling as a possible future interaction approach.
  • Research agenda: Blockchain still faces verification-speed, scalability, and privacy challenges because proof-of-work is slower and public-chain data is broadly available.These constraints remain relevant to protecting digital assets and supporting metaverse-scale systems.

XIX. CONCLUDING NOTES

The metaverse is progressing through emerging technologies and ecosystem development, but substantial challenges remain before it becomes integrated into everyday physical life. The survey therefore advocates a holistic approach and identifies a research agenda for shaping its future.

  • Emerging technologies and ecosystem refinement are expected to make virtual worlds more interactive, embodied, multimedia, and closely connected to physical reality.The paper specifically highlights powerful computing devices and intelligent wearables as contributors to this development.
  • The paper advocates a holistic approach because the metaverse is envisioned as an enormous entity existing in parallel with physical reality.
  • The survey identifies fundamental challenges and a research agenda intended to shape metaverse development over the coming decades.
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