RAC-Chain: An Asynchronous Consensus-based Cross-chain Approach to Scalable Blockchain for Metaverse

Tianxiu Xie, Keke Gai, Liehuang Zhu, Shuo Wang, Zijian Zhang

Abstract: The metaverse, as an emerging technical term, conceptually aims to construct a virtual digital space that runs parallel to the physical world. Due to human behaviors and interactions being represented in the virtual world, security in the metaverse is a challenging issue in which the traditional centralized service model is one of the threat sources. To conquer the obstacle caused by centralized computing, blockchain-based solutions are potential problem-solving methods. However, it is difficult for a single blockchain to support large-scale data and business services in the metaverse, due to the scalability restrictions. Moreover, multi-chain settings also encounter the interoperability issues. In this work, we propose a Relay chain and Asynchronous consensus-based Consortium blockchain cross-Chain model, which realizes message transmission and cross-chain transactions in multiple chains by adopting the relay chain and cross-chain gateways. All nodes of the application chains and the relay chain execute cross-chain transactions in sequence and reach a consensus on transactions at any transmission delay. Our experiment evaluations demonstrate that our approach performs well in atomicity, security, and functionality (cross-chain transactions), such that the performance of blockchain scalability in the metaverse can be improved, compared with the traditional relay chain schemes.