Zecrey in Metaverse: Analysis of Privacy Protection

8 min readSep 16, 2021

The famous American science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash) described a network world parallel to the real world called Metaverse in 1992 [1]. All people in the real world have an Avatar in the metaverse. Stephenson’s metaverse is a new form of the Internet in the next stage after the realization of virtual reality. In 2018, the sci-fi movie “Ready Player One” directed by Spielberg [2] is considered to be the most in line with the “metaverse” described in “Avalanche”. In the movie, wearing a VR helmet, the actor can instantly enter another extremely realistic virtual game world that he designed-”Oasis”. In the “oasis” scene set by “Top Player”, there is a fully operational virtual social form, including countless digital content and digital products from all walks of life, in which virtual personality can exchange value. Note that this film grossed over $582 million worldwide, as well as earning a nomination for Best Visual Effects at several Awards [2].

If these “metaverses” still exist in novels and movies, then Roblox [3], which was called the first share of “metaverse”, successfully listed on the NYSE in March this year, seems to mean that this virtual world wants to go to reality. This is also considered by the outside to be the starting point for the explosion of the metaverse concept this year. Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation. It allows users to program games and play games created by others. What’s more, compared with most other games, in Roblox, games can define their own roles, while focusing on the design to meet the social needs of players, and also have an in-game economic system, which is the cornerstone of promoting circulation and trading.

At present, the concept of metaverse does not have a simple and specific definition, so it has attracted many Internet companies to enter this track to shape and define metaverse in their own way and understanding. It is undeniable that many blockchain projects and Internet teams are using the concept of metaverse to gain popularity or attract attention, but metaverse has indeed become a recognized form of the future of the Internet.

In Roblox’s prospectus, Metaverse has a more specific description. The company believes that a true Metaverse product should possess 8 attributes: identity, friends, immersion, low latency, diversity, anywhere, economic system and civilization [4].

Identity: Every participant can create a self-difined character which is unnecessary to be relevant with the identity in real-lives.
Friends: This attribute means that everyone in the metaverse can find or form their own social circle and enjoy it.
Immersion: Immersion has so far been a neglected part of human-computer interaction. Although it is often mentioned in the game environment, it can also be used when you read a particularly fascinating book, or when you watch a movie or TV show. Have such an experience. However, the feeling of being immersed in a book or movie is very different from the feeling of being immersed in a game. In most media, players will perceive a character with the development of the plot rather than external influences, because the character’s personality has been determined by the author or director. On the contrary, in the game, the player’s control of the game character and this sense of substitution become an important factor affecting the game environment.
Low Latency: Game latency is the speed at which data is returned from the game client to the server. The better the network status, the faster the server response; the fewer the number of users, the lower the latency will be. In some games that require rapid response, such as competitive and RPG battles, delay has a great impact on the game. The latency in Roblox is very low, because they are all low pixel levels, and the granularity is very coarse. At this time, the amount of calculation is a little smaller, and ordinary computers can also bear it. If the picture is very fine, the speed of many computers simply cannot meet the requirements.
Diversity: The metaverese must have freedom and diversity beyond reality.
Anywhere: Not restricted by location, any user can use the specific terminal to enter and exit the metaverse anytime, anywhere.
Economic System: Roblox has its own economic system. When there were enough players and game developers on the platform, in 2008, the company stopped its own game development and launched the virtual currency Robux on the platform. In 2013, Roblox provided developers with virtual goods. After that, Roblox continued to optimize this real-world currency trading system. For developers, Roblox can be earned in four ways, namely, selling paid games developed by themselves, earning players’ time sharing on free games developed by themselves, paying transactions for content and tools between developers, and selling virtual games on the platform. For example, 21-year-old Alex started to create games on Roblox at the age of 9. When he was 17 years old, he made a game “Prison Break” which was played 4 billion times in total, relying on the skins and props in this game. Waiting for sales, Alex can earn millions of dollars every year.
Civilization: Roblox also has its own civilization system. Several people may form a community. The community forms a big city. Everyone makes common rules, and then they live together in it and evolve into a civilized society, so it is an evolving process.

Although Roblox has put forward such a concrete definition on Metaverse according to their published games, the concept still has a gap with the meteverse in public’s vision. After all, the game is only the fastest landing application scenario with the most realistic effects of Metaverse, but it is far from the mature form of Metaverse. In our opinion, metaverse can be defined from two dimensions. On one hand, it realizes the mapping of entities and activities in the physical world to the digital world. On the other hand, it is a native digital society with built-in roles and rich social, gaming, education and other diverse activities that can be customized, as well as a set of social mechanisms to promote normal operation.

As one of the most concerning issues in the real world, privacy protection has received attention from all walks of life, especially in blockchain ecology, which is one of the backbone technologies of metaverse [5]. The metaverse may bring surprising changes to both the real world and the virtual world to make people excited, but the privacy issues in the metaverse will also become an object that needs to be carefully and intensively focused on [6]. We summarize the privacy issues in metaverse from the following three vectors.

The first is data security. The amount and richness of personal data collected by the metaverse will be unprecedented, including personal physiological reactions, exercise, and possibly even brain wave patterns. Will there be a primary administrator of Metaverse to collect and share this personal data? If users’ personal data is stolen or misused in the metaverse, who will be responsible? How and when should the user’s consent be obtained for various types of information? The privacy issues of such personal information should be considered rigorously in the construction of Metaverse.

The second is intellectual property [7]. The content creation of Metaverse is done by multiple people, which involves the issue of who owns intellectual property rights. The rules of co-copyright and co-ownership are complex. In complex virtual world scenarios, their application will become more complicated, because stakeholders are most likely to exist in the form of groups. At the same time, the fast-developing metaverse may involve the “mix and match” of elements and the integration of intellectual property rights owned by different stakeholders. The traditional risk allocation and terms of use in intellectual property licensing will need to be reviewed. This involves complex ownership certification and integrity verification issues.

In addition, the globality and interoperability of Metaverse will inevitably encourage multiple companies to communicate and cooperate with each other in order to provide participants with more choices and better experiences. But if they are competitors, there may be anti-monopoly issues between Meta Universe products. How to break the data islands between oligarchs or competitors and realize value circulation, information sharing and task collaboration under the premise of ensuring the data privacy of each company is a key challenge that Metaverse needs to solve.

Aiming to provide efficient cross-chain privacy for any blockchain users, Zecrey has the potential to handle the aforementioned issues encountered in metaverse. Zecrey utilizes zk-rollup, twisted EIGamel, and other advanced cryptographic algorithms to implement a lightweight and efficient privacy-protected digital assets management protocol in both isolated or cross-domain applications. The novel cross-chain bridge technology designed by Zecrey [8] brings a perfect solution for privacy-awared interoperability in Metaverse. Users in various scenarios of metaverse can cooperate with each other or share information and services to accomplish a collaborated task or achieve greater value in a private manner with the aid of the cross-chain privacy function provided by the wallet of Zecrey protocol. Thus, Zecrey can be characterized as an interaction interface for both common users and developers to participate in future metaverse in a privacy-protected manner.

Metaverse will empower all industries, stimulate new momentum for the development of traditional industries, and achieve high-quality development of the industry. The metacosmization of thousands of industries makes privacy protection and interoperability an extremely important requirement. It is expected that Zecrey can become an indispensable set of privacy protection standard protocol in the metaverse and assist in the construction of a decentralized privacy-protected metaverse.

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