Merkle Trees vs. Verkle Trees, Explained
Merkle trees are used in Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies to more efficiently and securely encrypt blockchain data. Verkle trees allow for smaller evidence sizes, which is especially important for future Ethereum scaling upgrades.
How do you identify a Merkle tree? Leaf nodes, non-leaf nodes, and the Merkle root are the three essential parts of a Merkle tree in the context of blockchains. Transaction hashes or transaction IDs (TXID) reside in leaf nodes, which can be viewed on a block explorer. Then, above the leaf nodes, a layer of non-leaf nodes is chopped in pairs. Non-leaf nodes retain the hash of the two leaf nodes they represent below them.
Related: What is blockchain technology? How does it work?
As the tree shrinks as it goes up, half as many nodes per layer are formed when non-leaf node levels continue to be chopped in pairs. Two nodes will be present in the last layer of non-leaf nodes, which establishes the Merkle root (used to verify leaf nodes) and is the location of the last hash in a Merkle tree.
The Merkle root stored in the data portion of a block can be compared to the Merkle root stored in the header, allowing the miner to quickly identify any manipulation. A Merkle proof combines the proven value and the hash values needed to retrieve the Merkle root. Additionally, they support Simple Payment Verification (SPV), which can be used to authenticate a transaction without downloading a full block or blockchain. This allows using a crypto wallet or thin client node to send and receive transactions.
Verkle trees significantly reduce the size of proofs for a large amount of data compared to Merkel trees. Proof length, usually logarithmic in state size, impacts network communication. But what is Verkle's proof? A Verkle proof is proof of a large amount of stored data, which could easily be verified by anyone with the root of the tree.
The demonstrator should offer a single piece of evidence demonstrating all parent-child links between all commitments along the paths from each leaf node to the root instead of presenting all "sibling nodes" at each level of the Verkle trees. Compared to ideal Merkle trees, evidence sizes can be reduced by a factor of six to eight and more than a factor of 20 to 30 compared to Ethereum's current hexanary Patricia trees.
Merkle trees are used in Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies to more efficiently and securely encrypt blockchain data. Verkle trees allow for smaller evidence sizes, which is especially important for future Ethereum scaling upgrades.
How do you identify a Merkle tree? Leaf nodes, non-leaf nodes, and the Merkle root are the three essential parts of a Merkle tree in the context of blockchains. Transaction hashes or transaction IDs (TXID) reside in leaf nodes, which can be viewed on a block explorer. Then, above the leaf nodes, a layer of non-leaf nodes is chopped in pairs. Non-leaf nodes retain the hash of the two leaf nodes they represent below them.
Related: What is blockchain technology? How does it work?
As the tree shrinks as it goes up, half as many nodes per layer are formed when non-leaf node levels continue to be chopped in pairs. Two nodes will be present in the last layer of non-leaf nodes, which establishes the Merkle root (used to verify leaf nodes) and is the location of the last hash in a Merkle tree.
The Merkle root stored in the data portion of a block can be compared to the Merkle root stored in the header, allowing the miner to quickly identify any manipulation. A Merkle proof combines the proven value and the hash values needed to retrieve the Merkle root. Additionally, they support Simple Payment Verification (SPV), which can be used to authenticate a transaction without downloading a full block or blockchain. This allows using a crypto wallet or thin client node to send and receive transactions.
Verkle trees significantly reduce the size of proofs for a large amount of data compared to Merkel trees. Proof length, usually logarithmic in state size, impacts network communication. But what is Verkle's proof? A Verkle proof is proof of a large amount of stored data, which could easily be verified by anyone with the root of the tree.
The demonstrator should offer a single piece of evidence demonstrating all parent-child links between all commitments along the paths from each leaf node to the root instead of presenting all "sibling nodes" at each level of the Verkle trees. Compared to ideal Merkle trees, evidence sizes can be reduced by a factor of six to eight and more than a factor of 20 to 30 compared to Ethereum's current hexanary Patricia trees.
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