GorillaPool mines first Teranode block: a massive milestone

Scalable Bitcoin’s “Teranode Era” took another giant leap this month, as GorillaPool’s GorillaNode mined its first Teranode block on the BSV mainnet. A true global digital economy is now possible and accessible to all, with the potential for millions (or far more) of data transactions per second. It’s secure and affordable enough to use as often as you like, and the network is open to anyone who wants to join it.

• GorillaNode mined first Teranode block
• TAAL’s Teranode block
• Who developed GorillaNode
• Reaching for global scale

The block in question arrived on December 15, 2025, at block height #927546. GorillaPool called it “a totem pointing to the future; a checkpoint in the history of distributed consensus.” Bitcoin historians, remember that number as it’s far more than just another six-figure string. It’s a pointer to a future where the entire world’s data can live on-chain, immutable, and secured by real proof-of-work (PoW).

GorillaNode’s first Teranode block is approaching the one-year anniversary today of TAAL’s first block using Teranode software, at block #875980 on December 20, 2024. At that time, Teranode still wasn’t widely known, and mining a mainnet block proved it was a real thing, ready to take off as soon as the code was refined enough to release publicly.

It’s a very real thing now, though, and worthy of far more attention (hype even). With two of BSV’s most prominent mining groups now able to process Teranode blocks on the mainnet, it’s only a matter of time before others follow suit.

“The crazy thing is that there’s no template for any of this. NOBODY has done this kind of thing before, and if they have, they kept it secret,” said GorillaPool Co-founder Kurt Wuckert Jr.

“There’s never been an open source Teranode pool, there’s never been node software like Teranode, and nobody else has a tool like JungleBus, so building them all out and connecting them together has a ton of risk. But that’s what GorillaPool does. We believe in taking big risks because that’s what bitcoin needs from us.”

GorillaPool started processing BSV blocks in 2021, at block #704246, as an open alternative to large corporate mining operations, and one that anyone with hashing power to contribute could join. Since then, it has become one of the BSV blockchain world’s most prominent mining outfits with a ~12% share of the network’s power (and source of near-100% of its gorilla memes). It has a 2% pool fee with daily payouts (PPLNS) and also provides professionally managed ASIC hosting for those who prefer to buy mining shares instead of their own machines.

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GorillaNode is the Teranode-specific implementation, developed in-house by Co-founder Michael “Root” Boyd as well as developers David Case, and Luke Rohenaz. Boyd thanked his colleagues and BSV Association’s Teranode development team for their efforts in bringing everything together:

“I’m really grateful for the work Luke and David have put in to create GorillaNode so that GorillaPool is ready for this next chapter of scalable Bitcoin, and for the leadership of Kurt and our partners pushing us towards the finish line and providing everything we need to get the job done. The new node is elegant and slick to operate, and has some great new features.”

One of those features, added by Case, is that GorillaNode will pay its hashers directly from the coinbase transaction, with fresh “virgin” BSV coins in each block it mines. Previously, coins would be sent to an internal pool wallet and distributed to participants after reaching “maturity,” which occurred after 100 additional confirmations.

“We’ve been internally testing GorillaNode on the Teratestnet and the legacy BSV testnet and it’s been working great,” Boyd added, saying the company would expand its mainnet testing and work through any last-minute bug fixes before dedicating more hash power to the Teranode mainnet.

“As a long-time old bitcoiner, and having operated GorillaPool’s infrastructure since the beginning, it’s been amazing and an honor to find, broadcast, and index our first block of the Teranode era from machines I built and operate that are running our Teranode cluster, GorillaNode deployment, JungleBus, and 1Sat overlay clusters, from our own private datacenter.”

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‘Global scale’ isn’t just a slogan, it’s a serious engineering challenge

“This means we have the option to use common dependencies or share some of the exact calculation code that the node itself does, etc.,” said Rohenaz, GorillaPool’s Lead JungleBus Widget-Winder. “A lot of the mechanics for how things work are similar, but this time around, we get a lot more visibility into the behavior of the network and a better user experience for pool hashers. Pool managers also get a dashboard now that helps them monitor the state of the network more closely.”

GoLang maps naturally to mining pool workloads with thousands of simultaneous miner connections, making GorillaNode’s code simpler and with superior performance for faster startups and a lower memory footprint. GorillaNode also has its own wallet software for security isolation, and native compatibility with Teranode itself means it doesn’t need to maintain abstractions for multiple blockchain families (as Miningcore does).

In addition to helping build GorillaNode, Case (GorillaPool’s Lead Code Monkey) reportedly holds the honor of being the first developer outside BSV Association‘s team to submit a pull request for Teranode.

“BSVA made a post about me being the first external person to submit a pull request to Teranode. It was (that) it fixed the RPC broadcast functionality for GorillaNode.”

GorillaPool noted in its announcement that “global scale” should never be just a slogan for BSV and blockchain in general, and acknowledged the serious engineering challenge it presents. GorillaPool is determined to make it work and is preparing for a future that lives on-chain.

“I am just grateful for the opportunity to do everything I can to keep the original dream of scalable Bitcoin alive and well,” Boyd said.

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Watch | BSV is Open: Anyone Can Build, Mine, or Use