High level architecture

Presentation of the diagram

The diagram presented above gives a global view of the Metastudio technical solution. The next sections will describe each component of the architecture.

L2 sidechain

The layer at the bottom of the diagram represents the blockchain network, where lives the smart contracts of our system. In order to support fast, cheap, secure transactions, but also to support the smart contract capability and offer compatibility with the most used blockchain technology, we choose to use a Layer 2 sidechain that relies on the Ethereum network. Several technologies that match those requirements are available at the time of writing, such as Polygon, Avalanche or Arbitrum. The choice of the specific technology is not yet confirmed and will be assessed during the development phase. Indeed, since all those technologies are EVM compatible, the development of the smart contract and the connectors with the blockchain are transparent in the sense that the blockchain is virtually interchangeable. The choice will off course take into account technical aspects and advantages of each candidate, but will also be heavily influenced by the broader context of the cryptosphere (i.e. trending technologies, attacks that would have happened on the networks, access to development facilitator).

The smart contracts of Metastudio are the foundations of our metaverse mechanics, supporting both the main features and the economics. The tokens of our metaverse are the following: Metas Token: the utility token of our metaverse, used as the general currency Land NFT: non-fungible tokens representing parcels of the metaverse’s virtual map Asset NFT: non-fungible tokens that are created by the users that could represent any virtual asset of the metaverse Avatar NFT: non-fungible tokens representing the in-game figures of users

Aside from tokens, we also implement the logics that are at the heart of our metaverse in smart contract in order to benefit from transparency and security properties of the blockchain: Business: each business founded, administrated and used by users are represented and executed within this smart contract. It embarks all the properties of the business, the involved users, rules and mechanics (e.g. dividends distribution, employment, liquidation of the business etc.). Community: similarly to the concept of Business, users are able to found Communities to share information, discuss, take decisions collectively and monetize their social networks through publicity and marketing activities. It has to be noted that those notions of Business and Community could be split into multiple smart contracts, unlike a simplified single smart contract architecture as presented in the diagram.

The metaverse also includes a Marketplace smart contract to manage the exchange of tokens and also more complex assets such as businesses.

Finally, the Staking Vault smart contract lets users lock their utility tokens in order to participate in the governance of the metaverse (cf. Governance DAO in the next section).

External web services

Metastudio relies on the use of several services exposed on the web: Blockchain Node Provider: a service exposing a REST API to interact with the blockchain network. It is typically used to submit transactions, but also to fetch some data from the ledger (e.g. Infura or Alchemy). Blockchain Indexer: a service that stores all the blockchain data in databases in order to optimize querying with fast response time and support of complex queries (e.g. etherscan for Ethereum or polyscan for Polygon). Blockchain Task Automaton: administrating a blockchain-based solution requires a lot of transactions from the company’s admins side (e.g. airdrop campaigns, reward management). A task automaton such as Openzeppelin Defender can perform automatically those routine tasks as well as triggering actions based on blockchain events (e.g. initiate a multi-signature transaction to top up an administration wallet once a threshold has been reached). IPFS: the Inter Planetary File System is mainly used as a distributed storage solution for NFTs’ metadata but also for some other technical data required by web3 services such as The Graph, a community blockchain indexer. Crypto Ramp: a service letting users buy and sell crypto with/for fiat money using their credit card or bank account (e.g. Moonpay, Stripe). Governance DAO: the decentralized governance of our metaverse is based on the token staking mechanism and managed using a DAO web (3) service, integrated into our solution (e.g. Aragon).

Eniblock Infrastructure

Metastudio chose the Eniblock Wallet as the main wallet solution for its users to store tokens, buy cryptocurrency and submit transactions to the blockchain. This wallet offers some cutting edge characteristics: Easy onboarding: users can create an account and an associated wallet simply by signing-in using their social network account (i.e. Google, Facebook or Twitter). Keyless: there is no private key. Eniblock uses an advanced cryptographic signature scheme where transactions are signed following interactions between the user’s wallet’s secret and the server’s secrets. By doing so, even if the user’s secret is stolen, the hacker is not able to take control of the wallet. Seamless and secure self-custody: unlike any other self-custodial wallets (e.g. Metamask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, etc.), the user does not have to back up a mnemonic phrase but instead, they can simply save the secret on a cloud storage (i.e. Google Drive or Dropbox). This wallet is automatically created for users who do not have or do not wish to use a pre-existing wallet.

Metastudio Infrastructure

Metastudio exposes three main services: Game Services: constitute the actual video game that renders the metaverse, its map, building, users, assets using its game engine as well as the game user interface. Blockchain Services: composed of services to manage each blockchain concepts (i.e. tokens, assets, governance, businesses and community). Administration Services: exposes functionalities for the monitoring, maintenance and administration of the whole Metastudio system. All services are accessed through the same Gateway Service, dispatching/routing the REST API calls to the adequate target service. For more information on the technological stack and security aspects of the Metastudio infrastructure, please refer to Technical Stack section.

Admin's browser

An administration WebUI is offered to the administrators of the system to access the administration services.

User's browser

The metaverse and all its features are accessed through a single WebUI.