What is DotCube Protocol?

Evolution of Internet and Metaverse

In the early 1990s, with the spread of personal computers (PCs), communication with others using PC has dawned. The services were limited, due to its closed structure where only subscribers of the communication service and host communication provider were able to interact. However, in the late 1990s, with the introduction of various browsers, an open network, the Internet, was introduced, and hypertext, i.e., each text connected to each other by a convention called hyperlink, constituted an infinitely expandable network without any specific order or system, and users could enjoy services that broke away from the previous closed structure.

But the first generation of the Internet faced the limitations of a one-way delivery of information among service providers and users, and the second generation of the Internet, or Web 2.0, was born in response to users' desire for autonomy and scalability. An era where the boundaries between producers and consumers of information became blurry has arrived, with Wikipedia representing collective intelligence and blogs allowing information consumers to become information providers.

The subsequent metaverse has been dubbed Web 3.0. Web 3.0 is the era where consumers become the main actors of business. In the Web 3.0 era, instead of having a center of service and a consumer orbiting around it, each consumer is the subject of business, and business processes are operated with a completely different mechanism than before. Decentralized services of blockchain services can be seen as representative Web 3.0 services.

However, most of the metaverse services currently in operation are lacking in their identity as Web 3.0 services. The expansion of meta-space services has been taken for granted due to changes in the technological environment, such as the explosive expansion of computing power of personalized devices such as smartphones, the increase in bandwidth and speed of networks represented by 5G, the reduction of user costs, and the expansion of always-on services (music streaming services, OTT services, etc.). However, the current metaverse services retain conventional formats, such as PC communication services, where the service provider (metaverse service provider) opens a service and secures a revenue model by attracting users.

DotCube Protocol as Metaverse Service Protocol

As described above, the important metaverse currently in service is provided as a centralized service in which the platform's superior position is maintained and individual user can only access content and information after subscribing to the service for the virtual space provided by the service provider platform.

However, as a metaverse service based on the service structure of Web 3.0 based on decentralization, the DotCube Protocol is developing services in a different way than existing services.

① Moving Axis of Service from Space Centric to User Centric

The existing metaverse service is in the form of constructing a space on the platform and building the user's own space within the central space of the platform provided after the user subscribes to the service. In other words, the communication and various contents that can take place in the space are serviced based on the central space, which is difficult to separate from the platform. This limits the content or information that users want to share or provide and compromises the diversity of services required by each user. The DotCube Protocol is designed to allow users to take control of their services, so they can operate optimized for their own purposes and business processes.

This difference makes it possible to establish a service base that is more friendly to the user's usage behavior compared to existing platforms, and to create a network effect where various business entities can be connected around the user.

② Service Ownership of In-platform Service Provider

In existing platform-centric services, the service elements that make up each service, i.e., the space, the objects that make up the space, and the interaction with users in the space, are all assets of the platform, and service operation outside the platform is not expected. In other words, service providers build all assets on the platform but do not own them and cannot make any changes outside the rules and specifications set forth by the platform. In contrast, the DotCube Protocol enables each service provider to build their own business cube on their own server to provide their own services, securing ownership of the actual service. This means that all physical and virtual assets can be created, changed, and discarded at the service provider's discretion, and service providers can interact with users in the courser of various service alterations.

③ Organic Link Among Services Centered on the User

The DotCube Protocol starts the service from the user’s Cube, i.e., the user's individual space. Users can enjoy the services they need in the MyCube installed on the device they use. Users can store NFT items purchased from various services linked within the DotCube Protocol, DCPC, the centralized currency used by the platform, and tokens used in individual services, store cosmetic items purchased from each service, communicate with other users, and organize communities in their own space. The user's avatar acts as a browser that delivers information about these services, and each service acts as a webpage that provides services independently. This is an important business mechanism for each service provider participating in the DotCube Protocol that allows sharing of users and bring about network effects, allowing them to gain an expanded worldview organized around users.

Different types of services connected around users can also create new business models. For example, a metaverse-based live shopping service for luxury goods can be connected to an NFT marketplace to create a secondary market for goods by NFTizing the authenticity certificates of luxury goods and selling them on a community secondary market, while also creating a new market for selling the avatar assets of those goods along with the NFTs.

④ Providing Protocol-based Scalability Ensuring Autonomous Access to the Platform - Connecting Other Platforms

The DotCube Protocol does not share a physical platform with service participants, but rather provides a minimum standardized guide for composing services connected to the DotCube Protocol and gives service participants the autonomy to build services according to these standards. These standards define the basic architecture for building services with the DotCube Protocol, network standards, development standards, service interface standards, service application standards for each device, and repositories for other service operations. Each service built with these basic service standards will be able to freely move service links and assets centered on each user's avatar and MyCube, enabling each platform to secure service scalability.

Such a standards-based open protocol can be expected to attract new businesses to enter the user pool and create a synergistic effect where the influx of new users unfolds, which can be an important catalyst for the scalability of each platform. In addition, DotCube Protocol plans to develop additional technologies to interface with existing centrally controlled metaverse platforms in the future.

⑤ Providing Decentralized Service Composition

DotCube Protocol applies the philosophical direction of Web3.0 - decentralization, openness, and sharing - to the technology of the system's standards, the DotCube Protocol and the DCPC platform. This design direction leads to a decentralized service composition where services are organized around individual users and individual service entities, and where they can communicate and interact freely without centralized control. This decentralized system can be combined with similar blockchain networks and constitutes the technical foundation for various business synergies.

Technical Foundation of the DotCube Protocol - Overview of the DCP

Main technical foundation of the DotCube Protocol described above is being established as a standardized protocol. The DotCube Protocol consists of standard guidelines designed for each service provider to organize a platform to participate in the protocol's network to develop services, communicate with the MyCube installed by individual user, and effectively connect services with other service providers. Each service provider participating in the DotCube Protocol complies with the standards without any direct linkage with other services, so that user avatars can naturally visit and start linking with external services, and avatars can apply and use virtual assets and service items acquired from each service.

The DotCube Protocol is organized as follows

① Technical Architecture of Scalable Platform via DotCube Protocol

② Network standard (communication protocol)

• MSearch, view, visit, and link to other cubes in MyCube

• Network standards for interoperability and linkage of each asset and object within the service provider

• Define network protocols such as HTTP -> DCP, DNS -> CNS, etc.

③ Development standards for configuring individual service cubes (metaverse services)

• Server SW Architecture and communication standards for establishing service cubes

• 3D space development standards and creation tools within the platform

• Map creation standards within a service cube Min Object standards, map and object authoring tools

• Avatar Asset creation standards and authoring tools

• Content creation and application standards within service cubes (NPC, sound/video application standards, other content standards such as advertisements, etc.)

• Optimization standards for individual service cubes (packaging size and graphic resolution standards, etc.)

• Service management interface creation guide (cube management, member management, content management, file management, multi-access management, authentication, security, etc.)

④ Interface standards for interfacing between the DotCube Protocol Network and external independent platforms

• Defining the interface between 3D-3D spatial information

• Interface between Web3.0-based services and Web2.0-based services (SNS, blog, etc.),

⑤ Front service application standards for each device (PC, Smart Phone, HMD, AR Device, Hologram, etc.)

⑥ Component-based feature repository and API

• Chat Service, NFT Marketplace, Integrated Token Wallet, Integrated Blockchain API Server, P2P-based Streaming Server, User Authentication, Payment I/F Module, etc.