Knowledge Base

Overview

In Truestamp, a Merkle tree is a binary hash tree in which every parent node is the SHA-256 hash of its two children, so the single value at the top, the Merkle root, commits to every leaf below it. Truestamp hashes leaves under a 0x00 byte prefix and internal nodes under 0x01, sorts the leaves by key and pads out to a power of two, all described in depth in Truestamp’s Merkle tree. The trees appear in two layers: each internal block carries one tree whose leaves are the hashes of the items and entropy observations committed in that block, and each epoch carries a second tree whose leaves are block hashes. Membership of one leaf in a tree is proven with an inclusion proof, covered in Merkle inclusion proofs.