With a variety 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 to find them is not yet available.
That's why Web 3 startup Lighthouse has received a $7 million seed round to develop "the search engine of the open metaverse."
The round was led by Accel, BlockTower and Animoca Brands and included.
White Star Capital, Sparkle Ventures and Gemini Frontier Fund, among others.
The company plans to use the funding to grow its team and go public this summer, according to a press release.
Lighthouse allows users to search a database of all active events in Metaverse games like Decentraland and The Sandbox, while also being able to search for users' whereabouts in those virtual worlds.
The company's vision is in line with how the metaverse was envisioned going back to the summer of 2021, when the metaverse was seen as a large, interoperable landscape rather than closed ecosystems.
Because much of the data for these ecosystems is not publicly available on the chain, the platforms themselves must work with Lighthouse to be searchable in the database.
Lighthouse says it's not sure if every closed metaverse will open up to its search engine, but support from companies like Animoca Brands suggests some projects are already on board.
"The closed ecosystem narrative is something that doesn't align with the value of Web 3," said Jonathan Brun, co-founder of Lighthouse, in an interview with CoinDesk. "So far, in every single conversation we've had, we've been warmly received by players who see our platform as a tool that can help their ecosystems."