In cryptography and computer science, a hash tree or Merkle tree is a tree in which every leaf node is labelled with the cryptographic hash
Hash trees allow efficient and secure verification of the contents of large data structures.
In BitcoinBitcoin1$ 26,447.370.18%-6.01%-15.89%details‘s blockchain, a block of transactions is run through an algorithm to generate a hash, which is a string of numbers and letters that can be used to verify that a given set of data is the same as the original set of transactions, but not to obtain the original set of transactions.
Visualized, this structure resembles a tree. The Merkle tree is useful because it allows users to verify a specific transaction without downloading the whole blockchain (over 350 gigabytes at the end of June 2021).
True elegance becomes more so as it approaches simplicity.