  Dubbed "the successor to the mobile Internet", the concept of the Metaverse
has recently exploded in popularity. While there exists lite versions of the
Metaverse today, we are still far from realizing the vision of a seamless,
shardless, and interoperable Metaverse given the stringent sensing,
communication, and computation requirements. Moreover, the birth of the
Metaverse comes amid growing privacy concerns among users. In this article, we
begin by providing a preliminary definition of the Metaverse. We discuss the
architecture of the Metaverse and mainly focus on motivating the convergence of
edge intelligence and the infrastructure layer of the Metaverse. We present
major edge-based technological developments and their integration to support
the Metaverse engine. Then, we present our research attempts through a case
study of virtual city development in the Metaverse. Finally, we discuss the
open research issues.
