Lighthouse raises $7M to be the Search Engine for the Metaverse

With a plethora of metaverses (and even a MetaMetaverse) emerging in recent months, there are now things to do in virtual worlds, but a clean, easy-to-use search tool for finding them remains aloof.

Web 3 is a startup. Lighthouse has raised a $7 million seed round to build out “the search engine of the open metaverse.”

Accel, BlockTower and Animoca Brands led the round.

Participation by White Star Capital, Sparkle Ventures, and Gemini Frontier Fund, among other organizations.

According to a press statement, the company plans to use this funding to expand its team. It is targeting this summer to launch publically.

Lighthouse lets users search through a list of active events in metaverse games such as Decentraland or The Sandbox. Users can also search for themselves in these virtual worlds.

The company’s vision is in line with conceptions of the metaverse that date back to the summer of 2021 when the metaverse was envisioned more as one large, interoperable landscape rather than pockets of closed ecosystems.

Because much of the data for these ecosystems isn’t publicly available on-chain, the platforms themselves have to partner with Lighthouse to be searchable in its database.

Lighthouse says it’s unsure if every closed metaverse will open itself up to its search engine, but backing by firms like Animoca Brands suggests some projects are already on board.

“The closed ecosystem narrative is something that’s not super aligned with the value of Web 3,” Jonathan Brun, co-founder of Lighthouse, told CoinDesk in an interview. “So far, in every single conversation that we’ve had, we’ve been warmly received by players who see our platform as a tool that can help their ecosystems.”