Merkle Trees

A Merkle Tree is a digital structure used to efficiently and securely verify large sets of data. Imagine it as a family tree, where each leaf is a piece of data, and internal nodes are hashes—unique codes generated from their child nodes. By comparing these hashes, you can quickly confirm whether data is unchanged or intact without inspecting every piece individually. This structure enhances data integrity and security, especially in technologies like blockchain, allowing trusted and efficient verification of data chunks across distributed systems.