A secure authentication mechanism for federated metaverses using Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Abstract

The rapid growth of consumer-grade augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices has driven the interest in Metaverses, a type of fully immersive vir- tual world where people may communicate and conduct their businesses. However, similar to any restricted online services, the authentication of users is a crucial com- ponent to access any Metaverses. The authentication mechanism in the traditional online services has a number of issues such as password vulnerabilities, centralized control, identity fragmentation, session hijacking, scalability challenges, credential theft etc. Adopting such an authentication mechanism would introduce similar is- sues in the Metaverse domain. Moreover, there are also questions about additional security concerns in Metaverses as it is hard to control an individual’s virtual ac- tions. Hence, Blockchain create a decentralize environment that empowers users to take charge of their individual actions and identities. A smart contract that tokenize identity in the Metaverse can be executed securely within the blockchain technology. Therefore, a new authentication mechanism must be explored in order to increase the security of Metaverses. In this research, We propose a system utilizing the concept of Metaverse Federation in order to provide authentication throughout var- ious Metaverse, where multiple Metaverse will form a Circle of Trust (CoT) and the federation facilitates a secured authentication and identity management using a shared registry table for each Metaverse. This system leverages smart contracts and blockchain technology to generate Non-fungible token(NFT’s), which allow users to authenticate in various Metaverse. This enables users to navigate multiple Meta- verses with ease and a trusted identity, while complying with the specific rules and regulations of each Metaverse. we aim to explore a novel authentication mechanism tailored for Metaverses that will utilize the concept Non-fungible tokens (NFT’s) and the Metaverse Federation.