A Reputation-Aided Lightweight Consensus Service Framework for Multi-Chain Metaverse

As a fundamental technology of the Metaverse, blockchain enables numerous Metaverse applications. However, the blockchain consensus mechanism’s high energy consumption and performance bottlenecks have become an impediment to the green and sustainable development of the Metaverse. To tackle this challenge, we propose a lightweight consensus service framework that amplifies the throughput of the multi-chain system while concurrently mitigating its energy consumption. Specifically, we first establish a reputation rating system by designing a set of reputation rating and bonus-penalty rules. These rules efficiently evaluate the credibility of nodes in the multichain and optimally select the consensus node group, thereby streamlining the consensus procedure with security guarantees. Next, we incorporate the rating system into the proposed framework by constructing transaction processing workflows in both single-chain and cross-chain consensus scenarios. Additionally, we analyze the framework’s performance in terms of throughput, transaction latency, and energy consumption. The testing experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework significantly enhances performance compared with conventional blockchain systems, specifically a 48.7% improvement in throughput, a 56% reduction in transaction latency, and a 35% reduction in energy consumption.

Introduction

As a nascent technology that has gradually emerged under the wave of the internet, the Metaverse has found wide-ranging applications across a plethora of domains, by seamlessly interlinking the physical and virtual worlds through advanced technologies such as wearable smart devices, brain-computer interfaces, and edge gateways, among others. For instance, in the financial sector, the Metaverse enables users to engage in the free exchange of corresponding goods and services based on a platform-provided currency. It transforms the physical and social relationships that exist in the real world into data, thereby rendering the privacy and security of data in the virtual world of paramount importance. However, creating a Metaverse that is both secure and trustworthy presents a formidable challenge. In this context, blockchain technology, with its inherent attributes of decentralization, immutability, and transparency, has the ability to bestow upon the Metaverse a host of potent capabilities and function as a crucial infrastructure for the Metaverse [1].