Merkle Tree

A Merkle tree, also called a hash tree, is a data structure used in cryptography and blockchain technology to efficiently organize and verify large sets of data. Each piece of data (such as a transaction) is hashed, and pairs of hashes are combined repeatedly until a single "Merkle root" remains. This root acts as a digital fingerprint of all the data beneath it, allowing nodes to verify whether a specific transaction is included in a block without needing to download the entire dataset.