  In recent years, the maturation of emerging technologies such as Virtual
Reality, Digital twins, and Blockchain has accelerated the realization of the
metaverse. As a virtual world independent of the real world, the metaverse will
provide users with a variety of virtual activities that bring great convenience
to society. In addition, the metaverse can facilitate digital twins, which
offers transformative possibilities for the industry. Thus, the metaverse has
attracted the attention of the industry, and a huge amount of capital is about
to be invested. However, the development of the metaverse is still in its
infancy and little research has been undertaken so far. We describe the
development of the metaverse. Next, we introduce the architecture of the
socially beneficial metaverse (SB-Metaverse) and we focus on the technologies
that support the operation of SB-Metaverse. In addition, we also present the
applications of SB-Metaverse. Finally, we discuss several challenges faced by
SB-Metaverse which must be addressed in the future.
