After exploding in popularity in 2021, the term metaverse is now a catch-all to describe what many believe to be the future of the internet: an immersive and seamlessly interconnected virtual space that enhances the human experience. Although it is not a new idea, the current pace of innovation in the space is unprecedented. With such rapid growth comes increased fragmentation, as dozens of new virtual worlds emerge every month across the globe.

For most users, finding what experience to visit, meeting their friends, discovering cool events, or simply knowing where to begin feels increasingly overwhelming. For creators, displaying their work, building a community, and making authentic connections with their fans is also a daunting and disjointed experience. Unlike internet search, where every webpage is accessible from a single entry point, exploring different metaverse worlds currently requires users to jump across siloed platforms, hoping to stumble on something relevant and resonant. This reality emphasizes a common criticism made about the metaverse today: it feels empty, with most adventures looking more like solo explorations than a fulfilling, social, and multiplayer experience.

Lighthouse believes that the metaverse doesn’t need to be this way. Truly social experiences in the metaverse are lacking not because there’s little great content to discover, but because creators, friends and audiences simply can’t find each other. Through its portal, the company banks on the notion of social search to index experiences from prominent virtual worlds and empower users to find their friends across and within them. Users can follow creators, build their own Gate to the metaverse that collects and organizes their favorite projects and places, and jump into worlds and experiences based on intelligent recommendations and live information about where their close friends are.

“We realized that a memorable metaverse exploration is one that is shared with friends. While browsing the traditional web is mainly a solo experience, the metaverse is all about having a good time with people you care about. The notion of social search is a very important one when conceptualizing what the search engine of the future will look like. Our plan in 2023 is to double down on this idea by facilitating the creation of exploration groups, the capture and sharing of in-world memories, and the coordination of events - all while growing what has quickly become the largest library of metaverse experiences” said Jonathan Brun, co-founder & CEO of Lighthouse.

The Lighthouse platform is powered by both direct partnerships with virtual worlds and user-generated content coming from individual creators adding their own metaverse projects to the portal.

“Web search engines like Google or Brave use crawlers to discover publicly available web pages. However, because of the heavy and dynamic nature of 3D interactive media, powering search across and within virtual worlds requires direct data integration. The open metaverse is still early, which gives us the opportunity to work hand-in-hand with projects to deploy standards that will ensure that the spatial web forms a cohesive unit,” said Lighthouse’s co-founder and CTO, Justine Massicotte.

She added: “We’ve done a good job at rapidly becoming the most extensive open metaverse navigation engine, indexing thousands of experiences from more than 20 of the most prominent blockchain-friendly virtual worlds like Hyperfy, Mona, The Sandbox, Voxels, and Webaverse. This beta version of the product generated great traction with more than 40,000 testers registering in just a few weeks - much more than the traffic seen by most virtual worlds in an entire month. That was step number one. Now the focus is on allowing users and creators to build deeper ties, create shared memories, and find one another in a rapidly growing space.”

“As a metaverse creator currently building across many virtual worlds, having a unified, yet fully open place to display all my creations is an incredible asset. The Lighthouse portal is intuitive and their vision ambitious. I am so thrilled to be part of this future digital world,” said acclaimed architect Luis Fernandez of @LUISFERN5

“At Hyperfy, we’ve always deeply believed in the vision of an open metaverse. To us, it is all about providing great things to do to explorers, not locking them into one ecosystem. Our virtual worlds are built with this philosophy in mind and Lighthouse’s vision is aligned with ours. We are more than pleased to have our spaces indexed on the Lighthouse portal and look forward to continuing to grow alongside them,” said Ash Connel, co-founder and CEO of Hyperfy.

About Lighthouse

Lighthouse is building the open metaverse navigation engine, a unified interface empowering users to search for places, events, friends, creators, and experiences across and within virtual worlds. The Lighthouse portal currently indexes experiences from more than 20 leading virtual worlds, including ecosystems such as Hyperfy, Mona, Oncyber, Portals, Spatial, The Sandbox, and many others. Lighthouse is backed by Accel, BlockTower, White Star Capital, Animoca Brands and other leading venture investors. Learn more on lighthouse.world

For further information: Media Contact: Anastasia Uglova, anastasia@lighthouse.world

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