What is the Merkle Root?

In cryptography and computer science, a hash tree or Merkle tree is a tree in which every non-leaf node is labelled with the hash of the labels of its children nodes. Hash trees are useful because they allow efficient and secure verification of the contents of large data structures. Hash trees are a generalization of hash lists and hash chains.

Demonstrating that a leaf node is a part of the given hash tree requires processing an amount of data proportional to the logarithm of the number of nodes of the tree; this contrasts with hash lists, where the amount is proportional to the number of nodes. The concept of hash trees is named after Ralph Merkle who patented it in 1979.

In the blochchain every transaction has a hash associated with it. In a block, all of the transaction hashes in the block are themselves hashed (sometimes several times, the exact process is complex), and the result is the Merkle root. In other words, the Merkle root is the hash of all the hashes of all the transactions in the block. The Merkle root is included in the block header. With this scheme, it is possible to securely verify that a transaction has been accepted by the network (and get the number of confirmations) by downloading just the tiny block headers and Merkle tree, downloading the entire block chain is unnecessary. This feature is currently not used in Bitcoin, but it will be in the future.