NFTs for combating deepfakes and fake metaverse digital contents

The metaverse has gained immense popularity in recent years. However, the widespread adoption of this immersive virtual environment faces a substantial challenge from deepfake technology. The proliferation of deepfakes poses a significant risk as it enables the dissemination of misinformation and manipulated digital media. In this paper, we propose a blockchain and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) based solution to combat the threats associated with deepfakes. Our proposed solution is applicable to various types of digital media found on the internet, social media platforms, and within the metaverse. We incorporate decentralized off-chain storage to ensure the security and integrity of digital media. This leads to preserving both the digital media and associated NFT metadata in a secure manner. We leverage the intrinsic features of blockchain, such as tamper-proof logs and data provenance, to enable users to verify the authenticity of digital media. We introduce a decentralized reputation system that employs equations, trust factors, and trust badges. Through this system, digital creators are incentivized with trust badges based on their trust factor values, which enhances the overall credibility of the content. We present the cost and security analyses as well as provide a comparative evaluation against existing solutions. We make our smart contract code publicly available on GitHub.