Axolotls are a fascinating species of amphibian native only to Lake Xochimilco just outside of Mexico City. Once thought of as physical manifestation of the Aztec god Xolotl, they are now on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 1000 left in the wild. There is a large captive axolotl trade, but its tactics are dubious and often harmful to the gene pool, and restoring the wild population and its habitat are our only hope for the survival of this incredible species.
Why are they incredible? Well, aside from being extremely cute, axolotls have the amazing ability to edit their own physical form within their lifetime in order to adapt. They can grow new limbs and organs at will multiple times, and are 1000x more resistant to cancer than other animals. They also retain their gills for their whole lives, whereas other salamander species grow out of them, but if the axolotl needs to it can trigger its own hormones and outgrow its gills. Scientists are desperate to keep these creatures alive in hopes their genetic material will help us better understand disease and regeneration, and it has the potential to be incredibly helpful to humans for these and many more reasons.
Time is running out, and Lake Xochimilco is heavily polluted and extremely impoverished. However, there are local grassroots orgs working tirelessly to restore the lake and save the axos, but they are criminally underfunded. That's where our project comes in. We hope to gather support for this animal from our NFT community, especially because axolotls are popular on the internet and on merchandise because of how adorable they are. We actually have the power to save this animal from the brink! With our project we plan to funnel a large portion of the funds into local restoration groups and to use our community to find more local efforts. Long term, we aim to create a DAO where people can vote on additional species to add to our list to help, especially dire situations like with the axolotl. So many charities can feel like a bottomless pit and you never know if your money helps at all. We aim to lift the veil and show people just how much even a small amount could help literally save this species. Eventually, we would like to organize restoration field trips where community members can actually visit Xochimilco, see what the fruits of their labor have provided, and have volunteering days with the organizations we are helping. We are a team of only three, extremely passionate about helping animals, and the axolotl seems like the perfect place to start. Putting our project on your calendar would be a dream, because we would love more people to see that together we have the power to enact real results. If we don't act soon, it will be too late for the axolotl. We are more than determined to prevent that, and instead, to watch them and their lake thrive into the future.
Our pfp project will function similar to others, where each minted Axo comes with a selection of items and traits that define its abilities and character, which plays into the lore, which will be expanded as the project continues, into a storyline that will include game elements. Long term, we hope to have a space in the metaverse where owners can wear their Axos as an avatar.
Join the Axoshack server to get all of the details on how you can get yourself a whitelist spot
