Mona the Octocat

Mona is one of those rare internet characters that wasn't really created to become an icon. She just became one. What started as a stock illustration on a GitHub error page gradually grew alongside the platform itself, eventually becoming one of the most recognizable characters in developer culture.

Nearly two decades later, Mona is still part of GitHub's identity. $MONA is a Solana memecoin built around that existing history rather than a character or story created specifically for a token.

DexScreener · X · Build your Octocat

Project information

Contract

The official $MONA contract on Solana:

BGGYNGsnouXfi4nYo9JvNbQbaVdnaVby6g9FeZMYpump

Always verify the contract address before making a swap.

The origin

Mona's story starts in 2008, when GitHub purchased a stock illustration from British illustrator Simon Oxley called Octopuss. The drawing combined a cat with octopus-like tentacles and was initially used on one of GitHub's error pages, making an otherwise boring part of the site feel a little more human.

GitHub eventually renamed the character Mona. What could have remained a small piece of early web artwork instead started becoming increasingly associated with GitHub as the platform grew.

From Octopuss to Mona

Instead of disappearing after a redesign like most early web mascots, Mona became more important as GitHub expanded. New versions of the Octocat appeared in different costumes, situations and identities while keeping the same recognizable character at the center.

The Octodex turned that idea into a much larger collection of Octocats. Over time, Mona moved beyond the original illustration and into stickers, figurines, emojis, merchandise and community creations, giving the character a visual universe far larger than the stock artwork she started from.

stock art → error-page character → community mascot → permanent piece of internet culture

The Octocat

What makes Mona unusual isn't simply that the character survived. She remained relevant while the platform around her became significantly larger, and developers increasingly treated the Octocat as part of the culture surrounding GitHub, repositories and open source.

GitHub's own brand material still identifies Mona as its mascot and describes the Octocat as an icon to the developer community and a representation of open source. She wasn't attached to one temporary campaign or one era of the company. She stayed.

18 years later

Mona has now been around for roughly 18 years, which is an unusually long life for an internet mascot. During that time she has existed through multiple generations of software culture, social platforms, developer tools and internet trends while remaining connected to the same platform where she first appeared.

GitHub itself has grown into one of the world's largest developer ecosystems, representing more than 225 million developers, 4 million organizations and 800 million repositories. Mona has existed alongside that growth rather than being rediscovered years after disappearing, which means developers have been looking at some version of the Octocat throughout GitHub's rise.

Why Mona?

Most memecoin characters start with the coin and build their story afterward. Mona is the opposite. The character existed long before $MONA, with almost two decades of history attached to GitHub and the developer community.

There is no need to manufacture lore around her. The strange stock illustration, the error page, the Octodex, countless variations of the character and years of developer culture were already there before the token existed. That's what makes Mona interesting in the first place.

$MONA

$MONA is basically a coin around the character developers have been looking at for 18 years. That's the idea. There isn't a complicated story that needs to be added on top of Mona because the character already has one.

$MONA lives on Solana, with live market activity available through the Contribution activity section above and on DexScreener.

Contract

BGGYNGsnouXfi4nYo9JvNbQbaVdnaVby6g9FeZMYpump

View $MONA on DexScreener →

How to buy $MONA

Buying $MONA only requires SOL and a Solana-compatible wallet. Use the swap or trading interface you normally use, paste the official contract address and verify that it matches the address shown on this page before approving the transaction.

1. Get SOL
   Fund a Solana-compatible wallet with SOL.
2. Open a Solana swap interface
   Use the exchange or trading interface you normally use.
3. Paste the contract
   Use the official $MONA contract shown below.
4. Verify the token
   Confirm that the contract matches the address shown on this page.
5. Swap
   Swap SOL for $MONA.

BGGYNGsnouXfi4nYo9JvNbQbaVdnaVby6g9FeZMYpump

View the market on DexScreener →

Build your own Octocat

One reason Mona has lasted is that the character was never limited to one appearance. Different versions of the Octocat have been created with different outfits, accessories, themes and personalities while remaining recognizable as Mona.

GitHub's MyOctocat continues that idea by letting people build their own variation of the character. It's a simple extension of the same concept that helped turn one strange cat-octopus illustration into an entire family of Octocats.

Build your own Octocat →

Simon Oxley

None of this starts with $MONA, or even with Mona. It starts with Simon Oxley, the British illustrator who created the original Octopuss artwork that GitHub purchased in 2008. The illustration existed as stock artwork before GitHub adopted it, and what began as one of Oxley's illustrations eventually became the foundation for Mona and the much larger Octocat identity GitHub developed around the character.

Oxley also created the original bird illustration used by Twitter during its early years. Two illustrations from the same artist ended up becoming connected to two of the most recognizable platforms from the early social internet.

Simon Oxley · 1969–2026

The lore was already there

Mona didn't become interesting because $MONA launched. $MONA is interesting because Mona already had a story attached to her, from stock artwork and an error page to the Octodex, developer culture and nearly two decades alongside GitHub.

The lore doesn't need to be manufactured. Developers have already been looking at the character for 18 years.

Explore

Mona_TheOctocat / $MONA