What is Merkle Tree?
September 11, 2018
The Merkle tree, also known as a binary
hash tree, is a data structure that is used to store hashes of the individual
data in large datasets in a way to make the verification of the dataset
efficient. It is an anti-tamper mechanism to ensure that the large dataset has
not been changed. The word 'tree' is used to refer to a branching data
structure in computer science, as seen in the image below. According to Andreas
M. Antonopoulos, in the Bitcoin protocol,
"Merkle trees are used to summarize
all the transactions in a block, producing an overall digital fingerprint of
the entire set of transactions, providing a very efficient process to verify
whether a transaction is included in a block."
