🖍️Introduction

Metaverse provides unique developer tools with a strong focus on Digital Assets, Digital Identities and Smart Contracts.

Metaverse offers easy-to-use development kits that power the future of Finance and the Digital Economy. We support developers of decentralized applications by reducing transaction and deployment costs without compromising on security. Through the Hyperspace Blockchain, we have implemented one of the first functional dual-consensus (POW – POS) block production mechanisms, which ensures both low latency and security.

Continuing the legacy of a successful and innovative platform, we are proud to introduce the next evolutionary step, The New Metaverse Platform. As its predecessor, the New Metaverse Platform is an infrastructure layer of blockchain technology aimed to contribute to the decentralization of the ecosystem. In the new iteration, at its core, we enable the network layer and secure the layer using the Substrate modular framework in order to achieve higher scalability, long-term expansion, and to connect decentralized applications and services. We will also allow other independent blockchains to connect, exchange information and transactions.

Why Substrate?

Substrate offers a modular development framework, which allowed Metaverse developers to use core DLT primitives built by Parity Technologies and adapt them to the specific needs of our platform. The development path our team chose was to do a custom implementation for our own node, RPC synchronization, cryptography, networking, storage, consensus, a light client and telemetry using a combination of the Substrate Core, Substrate Runtime Module Library and Substrate Node in the first phase (explanation of each element below).

Building on a modular framework will also facilitate the development of smart contracts on the Metaverse platform, which is a core element missing in our former implementation. Smart Contracts will be executed in our own Metaverse Virtual Machine (MVM), an Ethereum-compatible VM. This will allow Ethereum developers to seamlessly run their Solidity code on the Metaverse Hyperspace Blockchain, and benefit from considerably lower execution and transaction costs. The major difference is that code is run in the Substrate runtime and not on Ethereum mainnet. This feature is extremely useful as it will allow us to onboard talented developer teams from the vibrant Ethereum community and gradually introduce them to Metaverse platform functionalities.

In the new Metaverse platform, we have also incorporated a DiD pallet, which will allow us to introduce advanced self-sovereign digital identity tools. Although we have basic DiD tools available on our current platform, the modular framework pallet will considerably increase the versatility of our DiD solution. For instance, it will allow us to add attributes on- and off-chain. It will also allow digital identities to sign off-chain transactions, a useful property to leverage off-chain information.

How does Substrate Work?

Substrate can be used in three different ways: Substrate Node, Substrate FRAME, and Substrate Core. A Substrate Node allows developers to run their own blockchain by submitting a configuration file (JSON file) that includes all parameters to create the Genesis Block.

Substrate FRAME is the method used by Substrate Node. This method includes customizable library modules, also called pallets, and allows developers to create their own pallet. Substrate Core allows developers to fully express their creativity and does not require them to use FRAME. This allows them to develop a runtime in any language they are familiar with and that is compatible with WebAssembly. Although this tool tends to be more difficult to use because of the additional configuration work required, they offer considerably more development freedom than existing framework and libraries.

To summarize, building The New Metaverse platform on Substrate modular framework, encompasses all the knowledge of previously built blockchain implementations (Bitcoin and Ethereum). Functionalities like balances, governance, accounts and smart contracts can be implemented similar to plugging in a library. Finally, a key feature is that Substrate also comes with the ability to implement forkless runtime upgrades.