ICN Challenges for Metaverse Platform Interoperability
Jungha Hong
ETRI
218 Gajeong-ro, Yuseung-Gu
Daejeon
34129
Korea
jhong@etri.re.kr
21 October 2024
ICNRG
ICN Research Group
Internet Draft
This document explores the potential of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) to enhance interoperability between metaverse platforms. ICN's content-centric approach, in-network caching, and inherent security features can address key challenges such as scalability, low-latency performance, data ownership, and standardization needs. It also identifies these challenges and proposes solutions to optimize data sharing, enable efficient content distribution, and enforce secure access controls.

Introduction
The metaverse represents the next evolution of the internet, blending virtual and physical worlds to enable rich, interactive experiences across various platforms. A critical challenge is achieving interoperability among various metaverse platforms to ensure seamless user interactions, asset transfers, and content sharing.
Information-Centric Networking (ICN) offers a promising alternative to traditional server-based architectures by focusing on content delivery rather than host-based communication. ICN's native support for efficient data retrieval, caching, and security could address many of the challenges in enabling metaverse platform interoperability.
This document identifies key challenges for ICN in supporting interoperability between metaverse platforms and suggests potential solutions to overcome these issues.
Metaverse Platform Interoperability
The metaverse cross-platform interoperability refers to different metaverse platforms' ability to interact seamlessly, allowing users to access content, assets, and experiences across multiple virtual worlds. This interoperability is achieved through the use of open standards and protocols that enable communication and data exchange between different metaverse platforms.
Interoperability is important in the development of the metaverse because it allows for greater creativity and innovation by enabling developers to create and share content across different platforms. It also allows users to have a more seamless and cohesive experience, as they can move between different virtual worlds without creating new accounts or starting from scratch.
The need for metaverse cross-platform interoperability arises from the fact that there are multiple metaverse platforms being developed by different companies, each with its own set of rules, protocols, and assets. This can create a fragmented metaverse ecosystem, making it difficult for users to move between different virtual worlds and for developers to create cross-platform applications.

Service Scenarios of Metaverse Platform Interoperability
This section describes several considerable service scenarios realized by interoperable metaverse platforms.
- Cross-platform metaverse exhibition: A cross-platform metaverse exhibition provides immersive knowledge that spans multiple metaverse platforms, offering visitors an immersive and enlightening journey. Leveraging advanced technologies, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), attendees can traverse a range of exhibits, interactive installations, and curated digital content. This innovative approach presents a novel way for individuals to immerse themselves in various thematic showcases, irrespective of their physical location.
- Cross-platform metaverse shopping: In a cross-platform metaverse shopping, users can seamlessly buy, sell, and trade digital assets and/or content across platforms. This interconnected ecosystem allows for broader opportunities and increased versatility in virtual transactions.
- Cross-platform metaverse co-working: Metaverse co-working entails leveraging metaverse technology to provide virtual co-working services, thereby offering an online work environment while maintaining the offline work environment and eliminating spatial limitations. In other words, it is beyond the typical online work environment of remote work and creates a virtual co-working environment. Users can access the metaverse co-working offices through the metaverse platform and animate their avatars to walk into a co-working office, work in a conference room, give a presentation, and so on. This makes it possible for people to co-work from anywhere, anytime, even if they are in different physical spaces, through the medium of the metaverse.
ICN for Metaverse Platform Interoperability
Information-Centric Networking (ICN) offers several key strengths that make it a promising solution for achieving seamless interoperability between diverse metaverse platforms. These strengths address critical requirements for efficient, scalable, and secure data sharing in highly interactive virtual environments:
- Content-Centric Communication: ICN fundamentally shifts the network paradigm from host-centric to content-centric communication. In a metaverse, where content (such as 3D objects, avatars, and media) needs to be easily and quickly accessed regardless of its origin, ICN's naming-based approach allows users to retrieve data directly by its name instead of relying on server locations. This content-centric model simplifies data sharing across platforms, enhancing interoperability without relying on centralized infrastructure.
- Efficient In-Network Caching: One of ICN's primary features is in-network caching, where frequently accessed data can be stored at intermediate nodes closer to users. This reduces latency and minimizes server load, which is crucial for metaverse platforms that involve real-time interactions and require instant access to virtual assets. ICN's caching capabilities improve data delivery performance, particularly when many users in different metaverse platforms access the same content.
- Seamless Multicast and Broadcast Capabilities: ICN's inherent support for multicast and broadcast communication is highly beneficial in the metaverse. For example, when multiple users interact with the same virtual environment or event, ICN enables the efficient distribution of content to all users simultaneously. This eliminates the need for multiple unicast streams, reducing network congestion and ensuring consistency in shared experiences.
- Security and Data Integrity: In a decentralized and interactive metaverse, security is paramount. ICN provides security at the content level, meaning that each piece of data is independently secured, regardless of its storage or transmission path. This ensures that sensitive information and virtual assets are protected as they move between platforms, making ICN well-suited for securing cross-platform interactions and transactions.
- Dynamic and Flexible Data Naming: ICN's use of Named Data Objects (NDOs) allows for flexible and dynamic naming of virtual content. In a metaverse setting, this enables granular control over virtual objects, allowing developers to define specific names and properties for each asset. This flexibility supports complex data interactions and ownership management, which is essential for the interoperability of digital assets across platforms.
- Scalability and Resilience: Metaverse platforms involve millions of simultaneous users and interactions, creating challenges for traditional host-based networks. ICN's architecture, which focuses on distributing data rather than establishing host-based connections, scales more effectively as the number of users and devices increases. Its distributed nature also enhances resilience, allowing metaverse platforms to continue operating efficiently even under high loads or partial network failures.
- Decoupling Content from Location: ICN's approach to decoupling content from its storage location provides flexibility in how data is stored, shared, and retrieved. In a metaverse, this decoupling allows different platforms to store and retrieve virtual assets without dependency on a single central server, improving the availability and accessibility of content across various virtual worlds.

ICN Challenges for Metaverse Platform Interoperability
This section outlines ICN's critical challenges in enabling interoperability between metaverse platforms. Each challenge considers the metaverse's unique requirements and how ICN must adapt to meet those demands.

Scalability
The metaverse involves interactions between millions of users simultaneously, often in real time. ICN must handle large-scale content distribution without introducing bottlenecks or network congestion.
Managing the simultaneous request and distribution of content at scale in dynamic metaverse environments presents a significant challenge for ICN.

Latency and Real-Time Interaction
Low-latency performance is a fundamental requirement in metaverse applications, where real-time interactions are critical for user experience.
While ICN's local caching and content routing reduce data retrieval time, maintaining sub-millisecond latencies for real-time interactions, such as avatar movement and voice communication, remains a challenge.

Security and Privacy
Metaverse platforms require stringent security and privacy measures to protect user data, digital assets, and interactions. ICN's model of distributing content over a network introduces concerns about unauthorized access and data integrity.
ICN needs to implement robust encryption mechanisms, access control policies, and privacy-preserving protocols to ensure that sensitive information remains secure.

Data Ownership and Rights Management
In the metaverse, digital objects often have complex ownership structures, with different levels of access rights and permissions. ICN must support dynamic and granular rights management, ensuring proper handling of ownership and usage rights across platforms.
Managing metadata for digital objects in the metaverse, including tracking ownership, usage, and modification rights, adds complexity to the ICN model.

Interoperability Standards
For true interoperability, there must be a standardized approach to naming, data formats, and APIs that enable different metaverse platforms to communicate effectively.
Managing metadata for digital objects in the metaverse, including tracking ownership, usage, and modification rights, adds complexity to the ICN model.

Proposed Solutions for ICN in Metaverse Platform Interoperability
- Adaptive Caching Strategies: Propose methods to optimize ICN's caching mechanisms for the high-volume, dynamic nature of metaverse traffic. These strategies should aim to minimize latency while ensuring that relevant content is cached close to users.
- Leveraging Multicast and Broadcast: ICN's inherent support for multicast can be used to efficiently distribute content to multiple users in shared virtual spaces. Propose optimizations for using multicast in real-time, interactive environments like the metaverse.
- Enhanced Security Layers: Recommend implementing advanced encryption techniques, user authentication protocols, and access control mechanisms to safeguard the decentralized nature of ICN in metaverse applications.
- Rights Management via Named Data Objects: Explore ways to enhance ICN's Named Data Objects (NDOs) to support complex ownership, access control, and rights management for digital assets in the metaverse.
- Standardizing Interoperability: Suggest developing a set of standardized naming schemes, APIs, and content formats within ICN to facilitate interoperability across diverse metaverse platforms. Collaborating with existing metaverse standards bodies will be critical.

IANA Considerations
There are no IANA actions required by this document.

Security Considerations
[TBD]

Normative References

Informative References
[FGMV-19]

ITU FGMV-19: Service scenarios and high-level requirements for metaverse cross-platform interoperability
December 2023
[aw-MV-icn]

Metaverse and ICN: Challenges and Use Cases
C. Westphal
H. Asaeda
October 2023
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-aw-metaverse-icn-01.txt
[IC-MV]

Information-Centric Metaverse
G. Fioccola et al
July 2023
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-fmbk-icnrg-metaverse-01.txt
[Dirk]

Statement: The Metaverse as an Information-Centric Network
D. Kutscher et al.
October 2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623565.3623761

Acknowledgements
[TBD]