From Blockchain to Web3 & Metaverse

The Metaverse seamlessly integrates the real world with the virtual world and allows avatars to engage in a broad range of activities including entertainment, social networking, and trading. In this book, we dive into the Metaverse by discussing how blockchains connect various Metaverse components, digital currencies, and blockchain-empowered applications in the virtual world. On the other hand, Web3 has also attracted considerable attention due to its uniquely decentralized characteristics. The digital economy, currently undergoing a rapid development, is a critical driver to highly efficient societies. It is imperative that we investigate how to use Web3 technologies to address the critical concerns encountered during the development of the digital economy by fully exploring Web3. In this book, we also share insights into the Web3-based ecosystem in the Metaverse; topics of interest include decentralized finance, digital assets, the asset-trading market, etc.
 Unlike most works on the subject, this book mainly concentrates on insights and discussions regarding blockchain, the Metaverse and Web3. In other words, it focuses on using blockchain technologies to enable an ecosystem for both the Metaverse and Web3. Topics addressed include blockchain fundamentals, smart contracts, value circulation in the Metaverse, the connection between the Metaverse and Web3, the establishment of the Metaverse on the basis of blockchain technologies, decentralized autonomous organization, decentralized storage, digital economy, Web3-based economic systems for the Metaverse, etc.
This book will be a valuable resource for students, researchers, engineers, and policymakers working in various areas related to blockchain, the Metaverse and Web3. We hope that it will also inspire readers from academia and industry alike, and ultimately help them create a truly open, fair, and rational ecosystem for the Metaverse and Web3.



Huawei Huang (Senior Member, IEEE) earned his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Aizu, Japan, in 2016. He is currently an Associate Professor at Sun Yat-sen University, China. His research interests include Blockchains, Web3, and Distributed Computing. He has worked as a research fellow of JSPS, a visiting scholar with Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a program-specific Assistant Professor with Kyoto University, Japan. He has served as a lead guest editor of a special issue on blockchains at IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), and a lead guest editor of a special issue on Fusing Blockchain and AI with Metaverse at IEEE Open Journal of Computer Society (OJ-CS).
 
Jiajing Wu (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, in 2014. She was a recipient of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme during her Ph.D. study in Hong Kong (2010--2014). In 2015, she joined the Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, where she is currently an Associate Professor. Her research focus includes blockchain, graph mining, network science. Dr. Wu has been invited to be the Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, the Guest Editor of Chaos, Sensors, IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems, and the organizer of several industry flagship conferences including IEEE ISCAS, CCF ICSS, and BlockSys.
 
Zibin Zheng (Fellow, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2011. He is currently a Full Professor with Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. His research interests include service computing, software engineering, and blockchain. He was a recipient of the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award. He received the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at the ICSE 2010 and the Best Student Paper Award at the ICWS 2010.