Overview

The audit path is the RFC 6962 name for the ordered sequence of sibling hashes that makes up a Merkle inclusion proof. Each entry records one sibling hash and the side it sits on, written as a direction:hash string where the direction is l (left) or r (right), ordered from the leaf’s immediate sibling up toward the root, so the number of entries equals the tree depth. A verifier replays the path by repeatedly hashing the running value together with each sibling on its recorded side; if the recomputed root matches the published root, the leaf is proven to be a member of that tree. The full walk, including the domain-separation prefixes it relies on, is described in Merkle inclusion proofs, and the tree it walks is defined by the RFC 6962 Merkle tree.