Back to glossary
Merkel Tree
A Merkle tree is a data structure used in blockchain technology to efficiently verify the integrity of large sets of data.
In a Merkle tree, each leaf node represents a data block, and each non-leaf node is the hash of its child nodes. The root of the tree is a single hash that summarizes all the data in the tree, and this root hash is included in a block header in a blockchain, which help confirm that the data block is indeed part of the blockchain.
Merkle trees have the ability to verify large sets of data in a short time and to provide a proof of data integrity without the need to store the entire data set.