What is Merkle Tree

Merkle trees are binary trees that represent datasets. Its topology is similar to that of an upside-down tree, with a single Merkle root at the top that links to several branches, which then connect to individual leaves. Merkle trees improve data integrity and efficiency in peer-to-peer networks by lowering the chance of previous data manipulation. On a blockchain, data from numerous transactions is saved within a block and recorded in a Merkle tree structure. Separate transaction data is saved at the root of the tree on a non-leaf node. To generate a hash for each leaf node, each piece of transaction data is sent through a cryptographic hash function. Following that, the hash labels of two leaves are sent into the hash function to generate the hash of related branches This procedure is repeated until the top row has just one hash code, the root hash, which contains all of the block's contents.

I-Crypto Isikhathi