Named Data Microverse

Jeff Burke – UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television | REMAP
Lixia Zhang – UCLA Department of Computer Science | Internet Research Lab
Dirk Kutscher – The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) | Future Networked Systems Lab

Winner of the Future of Data Challenge.

Overview presentation deck, March 12, 2023. (pdf)

For more information, email jburke@remap.ucla.edu.

Overview

The Named Data Microverse project explores how a new Internet technology, Named Data Networking (NDN), can enable a free, open and decentralized approach to “the metaverse”. The project aims to balances scalability and market-based innovation with democratization, trustworthiness, and equitable empowerment of individuals. NDN provides an architectural foundation for secure, distributed applications to be created more easily and provides resilience in natural disasters, better mobility support, cloud-optional local communication, improved privacy, and other benefits that are not addressed solely by “Web3” technologies.

Background

The rapid integration of real-time 3D rendering, mobile computing, and spatially-organized data is poised to transform use of society’s data network, as the World Wide Web did decades ago. Many use “metaverse” to describe this next generation of networking. Most emerging approaches reinforce the current Internet’s technical, economic, and socio-political structures, as well as limitations that arise from building on the host-to-host communication model of TCP/IP, the fundamental protocols of the current Internet. For example, users of consumer applications are authenticated by a small group of dominant providers who manage identities and data; individuals must rely on their goodwill to maintain privacy and security within so-called walled gardens.

Public interest in technologies like blockchain signals increasing concern with concentration of control. Yet, even these emerging technologies are usually conceived atop today’s Internet; they do not close the gap between new visions for the network and its fundamental technical approaches. Developed over forty years ago, core Internet protocols focused on connecting machines that were implicitly trusted. A similar model persists in today’s secure web protocols. Society’s data network could evolve from relying on implicit trust in who owns data pipes to explicit trust in data itself. This can arrest and reverse centralization of control.

Our project aims to develop new networking approaches for “building the metaverse” that support the broad range of efforts underway for interoperability and decentralization, using Named Data Networking (NDN). NDN is a foundational networking technology that can replace or run on top of TCP/IP. It offers developers and software architects the means to build secure, reliable, and interoperable applications more easily. It is particularly well-suited to metaverse applications and critically, enables cloud-optional designs for when connectivity is disrupted by an outage, emergency, or even just being in an airplane. Research in NDN and its use has been supported by NSF, DOE, DARPA, and NIST, as well as a variety of technology companies.

A technical overview of NDN can be found in this paper with a discussion that includes some of the historical motivations here. The Named Data Microverse efforts aims to apply what’s been learned from research in augmented reality, non-linear 2D media and game engine synchronization using NDN into more direct application with contemporary real-time extended reality platforms. It parallels the emergence of early commercial NDN solutions in operational technology, tactical networks, and content distribution.

Approach

The project’s model for the metaverse is of interwoven, decentralized “microverses” — ecosystems of content published as named, signed data and fully controlled by entities as small as an individual. NDN enables efficient access and trust management for such data without a sole gatekeeper for access, while still allowing service providers to add value. We aim to develop a vision of the metaverse as civic infrastructure in which experiences can be built from the ground up, microverse-by-microverse, with interoperability across the many different environments and worlds that are currently being envisioned.

In NDN, all data packets–e.g., those making up an object in a microverse–are named and cryptographically signed at creation. Data objects can then be trusted independently of who carries them and accessed by any network application. This enables the model of interwoven microverses controlled by data originators that can interact with or without cloud support. Trust models can vary from peer-to-peer to centralized to hybrids of the two. NDN provides balanced support for democratization, trust, and scale.

This project will identify key communities involved in advancing metaverse concepts and aim for making a deep impact, by communicating and discussing fundamental needs, the key concept and opportunities, enabling technology and what the ecosystem would look like for future development and standardization.

Recent and upcoming activities: