Open Source Summit North America 2023

We all want the amazing experience of the Metaverse, but what about the underlying infrastructure? The Metaverse presents a new set of challenges to edge computing and networking, taking demands for low latency, high throughput and availability to levels never seen before. In this presentation Ranny will analyze the different types of Metaverse use cases and the derived network and edge computing functionality. He will review the various technological approaches to handling these challenges and how open source software communities are already starting to build the foundations for the Metaverse. This is a follow-up presentation to an introductory session given by Ranny at O3DCon in Nov 2022. This time Ranny will focus on the developments in the open source communities in the time that has passed since, will introduce the newly formed FIG under the Open Metaverse Foundation (OMF) and provide the audience with recommendation for participating in building the open Metaverse future.

AR glasses are coming, they will have computer vision and amazing recording sensors, they will be running browsers in social Web XR. Who will control this future? Making a 3D space you're in complete control of should be easy. The web provides the right context and tool to create natural integrations to existing platforms, that works across all devices and performs as well as native apps. We are web and interactive creators who have been making open tools in this emerging space. Ethereal Engine is an open source platform driven by a community wanting to push the limit on what is possible on the web. We want a spatial website to be as easy as starting a blog or video feed. Our ecosystem of libraries and projects enables developers to use a modular set of tools to gradually migrate into the immersive future. This talk will share about building Spatial Web communities that are scalable, open and decentralized. Attendees will get an overview of the Spatial 3D web and learn about the opportunities and risks of computer version, augmented reality, virtual reality, special computing, and virtual worlds.

Join us as we delve into the exciting world of the Metaverse, exploring the opportunities and challenges that come with this new virtual landscape. Our panel of experts from the Network, Edge, Cloud Gaming, Web Engine, and WebXR fields will offer their unique insights and perspectives on the role of Open Source in shaping the future of the Metaverse. From building an inclusive and accessible Metaverse to overcoming technological hurdles, our panelists will provide a comprehensive overview of this rapidly evolving space. Don’t miss this chance to learn and engage in thought-provoking discussions on the future of the Metaverse.

Phishing, hacking, threats, fraud, and malicious behavior online of all types all share a common root: verification. In this session we’ll go beyond identity and explain how decentralized identity and verifiable credentials can provide a complete, secure system for exchanging different types of information between multiple parties. Learn how Trusted Data Ecosystems can connect people, machines, companies or any two entities to multiple businesses and jurisdictions without sharing private information. In this conversation, long-time community contributor at Hyperledger, working group leader at Decentralized Identity Foundation, and Indicio Senior Engineer Sam Curren will share more about digital trust and describe the critical importance of digital verification to decentralized healthcare, finance, the metaverse, and to the interaction of digital objects and non-digital objects in the spatial web—the “Internet of Everything.”

The metaverse has the potential to revolutionize the way we live, work, and interact as a society. The development of an open Metaverse will drive innovation, creating new economic opportunities, while enabling users to control their digital identity and assets. For the metaverse to reach its full potential, it must be built on open standards and principles that ensure interoperability, accessibility, and innovation. The complexity of the Metaverse involves the orchestration, processing, storage, and transportation of large datasets from edge to cloud. A heterogeneous infrastructure that integrates edge, cloud, networking, and data technologies will be necessary to support the various workloads and experiences in the Metaverse. Optimization for the Metaverse will require the underlying infrastructure to support plasticity – where the underlying physical infrastructure is enriched and presented to the platform as an optimized ecosystem based on service requirements. We will present the infrastructure challenges faced and latest innovations in the journey toward the Open Metaverse and thoughts on how and why open communities are critical to achieve the ultimate value that the Metaverse can deliver.
Collaborators on this talk are: Marcus Bonner and Jeroen Bronkhorst of Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Wenjing is a strong advocate and founding member of the new LFEU OpenWallet Foundation with a mission to drive global adoption of open, interoperable, safe and privacy protecting digital wallet technologies. In this talk, Wenjing will give an overview of the new OpenWallet Foundation and its mission, highlight the strategic role an open digital wallet will play in many aspects of Metaverse services, and explore the opportunities it will help bring for consumers, creators, developers, and businesses in the Metaverse.

In the Metaverse AI will dominate, whether used for autonomous AI agents, animating characters, building synthetic avatars and objects, instantly transferring the style of objects, synthesizing physics and natural phenomena or creating digital assets and virtual worlds simply from text descriptions. The use cases are nearly limitless and will continue to grow as neural methods continue to rapidly evolve. But what are the implications of AI in The Metaverse? Will it create a power imbalance? Will it fuel the creator economy? Can AI be used to protect privacy, security and safety in the Metaverse? Will toxic behavior be amplified through AI? How can we use AI in The Metaverse for good? This session will touch on the applications of AI in the Metaverse including the use of generative deep learning and deep reinforcement learning as well as conventional discriminatory deep learning. It will also touch on the potential ethical and legal issues along with the business opportunities for those who embrace AI in The Metaverse.

Brand owners, who are essential to the economic viability of the Metaverse, are actively exploring how they will use their brands in the Metaverse, and how to register and enforce their trademarks rights based on that use. However, much of the technology that will be used is still being developed, and current trademark law doesn’t align well with how consumers may interact with brands across various platforms in the Metaverse. After discussing relevant aspects of trademark law, Daniel Scales will discuss the particular challenges that the Metaverse might present for brand owners, how brand owners are currently attempting to address them, and how technology must help both brand owners and consumers.

Utility and support for traditional financial and commerce rails in web3 are key to increasing adoption and financial inclusion in the metaverse. However, many crypto projects are not yet connected to traditional financial and commerce platforms. Hence, utility is limited and many users are excluded. In this talk, Uchi explores opportunities for increasing utility be connecting to banking, mobile money, Gift card, and e-commerce platforms using open-source technology. Uchi will share a case study in the XRP Ledger ecosystem and draw from his experience building offline payment products on Celo and Polygon.

Humans are slowly becoming cyborgs. Computers have gone from desks, to pockets, to wrists, now to eyes and perhaps one day, brains. Where the Internet was the interlinking of desktop computers, the Metaverse will be the interlinking of people themselves. Like a fabric pulled over the real world, Metaverse applications will be synchronous, multiplayer, and real-time. If the Internet’s software ecosystem, the Web, runs on HTTP, which network protocol will power the software ecosystem in the Metaverse? Our bet is WebRTC.

WebRTC is open, robust and battle-tested over the last decade. But it’s not perfect: inconsistent implementations, low-level APIs and nonstandard signaling translates into a lot of bare-metal work for the application developer.  

In this talk, we’ll take you through LiveKit’s open source client stack — a custom build of libwebrtc mated to a shared Rust core, called by platform-specific SDKs like Unity or iOS. We dive into our SDK design principles, signaling protocol and interfaces which power real-time features like spatial audio, screen sharing, live chat and stream permissions in Metaverse applications including Gather, Decentraland and Portals.

Online identity doesn't have to be stuck in today's surveillance paradigms. Privacy-preserving verifiable credentials built on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) can be game changers for digital identity and trust. Hyperledger AnonCreds is an open source implementation of verifiable credentials (VCs)--digital versions of the paper credentials we use daily to share information about ourselves. AnonCreds (Anonymous Credentials) extend the VC model using ZKPs to include important privacy-preserving capabilities that can enable online trust without tracking. ZKPs allow you to prove something is true to another party without conveying any additional information. The classic example is proving (not just claiming) you are over the age of 19 based on your date of birth without actually revealing your date of birth. In this session, we'll provide an overview of the AnonCreds project, dive down (but just to a high school math level) into the magic of ZKPs, and show how privacy-preserving online identity solutions can be enabled with the ZKPs found in the AnonCreds specification and implementations. We'll cover how ZKPs are used in AnonCreds, run some peer-to-peer agents to see AnonCreds in action, and discuss how verifiable credentials can play a key identity role in the Metaverse.

Our industry is full of lofty goals and promises of new opportunities of working in the metaverse. Some consider this inevitable, some consider this overblown, and some consider this dystopia. Some, however, consider this their daily reality, and they're pretty happy with it... most of the time. Join Layl in an exploration of the much overlooked current citizens of the metaverse. The many content creators and internet personalities that build the backbone of the current and next generation of online content, the industries that support them, and more importantly, why their fans care. Listen to the harrowed tales that make up their daily work schedule, the issues they're facing, and why they're deeply worried about the dawn of what we call "the metaverse". But, they are in many ways living what we are working towards. If we listen to the issues they face right now, we can learn from it and build a better future. Let's look into this crystal ball, and imagine a better metaverse. Man. That is a lot of anime.

This presentation outlines the quantitative research that provides knowledge on different methods of visualization for processing Big Data sets in augmented and virtual reality. The focus will be on Statistical analysis performed on the Big Data sets in Metaverse, that points towards real time inferencing, infrastructure needs and transformative modern techniques. Upon evaluating the need for a combination of cognitive mechanism and high-end infrastructure to address the performance, latency, and security issues when working on Big Data sets in environments like virtual or Augmented reality, let's outline the role of Cognitive AI Agents to get a superior customer engagement model. Despite the modernization and advancement in technology there are increasing number of breaches in cloud and hybrid infrastructures, this justifies the need to meet the requirements of strengthening security, safeguard mechanisms and privacy. In this session, will discuss methods beyond basic visualizations through a deep dive exploration on improvising the applications of existing analytical methods, and use of advanced exploratory tools and visualization techniques on the next generation platforms.

Metaverse technologies are rapidly becoming an integral part of the modern digital landscape.The different technologies are: Extended Reality, User Interactivity, Artificial intelligence, Block Chain, Computing Vision, Internet of Things, Robotics, Edge and Cloud Computing and Future Mobile network As such, it is important to have a well-defined system for building a software Bill of Materials (sBOM) for these technologies. It is based on the convergence of technologies that enable multi-sensory interactions with virtual environments, digital objects which are new components not seen in sBOMs today. This talk outlines a process for creating an sBOM for Metaverse technologies, including the steps of identifying the components, defining the relationships between components, and creating a visual representation of the sBOM.

The metaverse provides enormous potential for consumers and businesses and is the next iteration of our digital future. It is revolutionizing how we work and opening new doors for value generation across industries. The metaverse is also transforming economies and social spaces, as an ever-expanding Internet of Place and Ownership. To tap into this potential, businesses can pair technology with creativity, driving experiences that will invigorate our lives, work and society. Metaverse is a buzzword with fluctuating definitions. Is it the same as Web3? Are there other words to define it? Will my company look cool if we say it? And does it really matter? Some have a short-sighted vision of the metaverse as a bleak, computerized world powered by people in virtual reality (VR) headsets. But once we cut through the misconceptions and hype, its potential is clear. The swath of contingent technologies will evolve and converge to open bold new opportunities for businesses and consumers. In this talk, we explore how we can create an open source foundation for the evolution of our digital world.

Real-time experiences in the Metaverse will yield massive amounts of data. How can we prepare for this avalanche of data and how will we cross the chasm from a few people to billions in an interactive environment? Join us as we get real.