Merkle tree
A binary hash tree where each parent is the SHA-256 hash of its two children, reducing a whole set of leaves to one root; Truestamp builds RFC 6962 trees over item and entropy observation hashes per block and over block hashes per epoch.
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 builds its trees to the RFC 6962 Certificate Transparency construction, described in depth in the RFC 6962 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.
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