Q&A on Merkle Trees and Merkle Roots (1) $BTC
Q: What is a Merkle Tree and why is it important in blockchain technology?
A: A Merkle Tree, also known as a hash tree, is a data structure used for efficiently summarizing and verifying the integrity of large sets of data. In blockchain technology, Merkle Trees are crucial because they enable the secure and efficient verification of content in large data structures, like blocks of transactions, ensuring the integrity and consistency of the blockchain.
Q: How does a Merkle Tree structure look and how is it constructed?
A: A Merkle Tree is a binary tree where each leaf node represents a hash of transactional data, and each non-leaf node is a hash of its respective child nodes. It’s constructed from the bottom up, starting from the leaf nodes (transaction hashes) and combining them pairwise to build up to the root of the tree, known as the Merkle Root.
Q: What is a Merkle Root and what role does it play in a blockchain?
A: The Merkle Root is the single hash at the top of the Merkle Tree. It serves as a concise representation of all the transactions in a block. In a blockchain, the Merkle Root is stored in the block header, ensuring that all transactions are accounted for and unaltered, as any change in the transaction data would lead to a different Merkle Root.
