Merkle Trees
Efficient verification.
The Problem Merkle Trees Solve
A block may contain thousands of transactions. How can a lightweight device verify that one specific transaction is included without downloading them all?
The answer is the Merkle tree — a structure that lets you prove membership with just a handful of hashes.
What Is a Merkle Tree?
A Merkle tree (or hash tree) is a binary tree where:
- Each leaf is the hash of one transaction
- Each internal node is the hash of its two children combined
- The single top node is the Merkle root