diff --git a/docs/docs/CHANGELOG.md b/docs/docs/CHANGELOG.md
index cf766d4e..645369fd 100644
--- a/docs/docs/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/docs/docs/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 - Fix a race in the bbolt store where the asynchronous cleanup scheduled by an expired read could delete a value that had just been refreshed; the delete now only fires when the key still carries the same expired generation it observed.
 - Marginally increase the performances of requests processing
 - Marginally improve the performances of PoW validation
+- Significantly improve the performances of the gzip middleware
 
 ## v1.25.0: Necron
 
diff --git a/internal/gzip.go b/internal/gzip.go
index c83a0edf..e9ecdb9d 100644
--- a/internal/gzip.go
+++ b/internal/gzip.go
@@ -2,11 +2,28 @@ package internal
 
 import (
 	"compress/gzip"
+	"io"
 	"net/http"
 	"strings"
+	"sync"
 )
 
 func GzipMiddleware(level int, next http.Handler) http.Handler {
+	// Validate the level once at setup; gzip.NewWriterLevel only fails for
+	// invalid levels and we'd rather panic now than mid-request.
+	if _, err := gzip.NewWriterLevel(io.Discard, level); err != nil {
+		panic(err)
+	}
+
+	// Per-middleware pool of *gzip.Writer. Each entry carries ~40 KiB of
+	// deflate buffers; reusing them avoids that allocation on every request.
+	pool := sync.Pool{
+		New: func() any {
+			gz, _ := gzip.NewWriterLevel(io.Discard, level)
+			return gz
+		},
+	}
+
 	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
 		if !strings.Contains(r.Header.Get("Accept-Encoding"), "gzip") {
 			next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
@@ -14,11 +31,13 @@ func GzipMiddleware(level int, next http.Handler) http.Handler {
 		}
 
 		w.Header().Set("Content-Encoding", "gzip")
-		gz, err := gzip.NewWriterLevel(w, level)
-		if err != nil {
-			panic(err)
-		}
-		defer gz.Close()
+		gz := pool.Get().(*gzip.Writer)
+		gz.Reset(w)
+		defer func() {
+			gz.Close()
+			gz.Reset(io.Discard)
+			pool.Put(gz)
+		}()
 
 		grw := gzipResponseWriter{ResponseWriter: w, sink: gz}
 		next.ServeHTTP(grw, r)