The Merkle tree, also known as a binary hash tree, is a data structure that is used to store hashes of the individual data in large datasets in a way to make the verification of the dataset efficient. It is an anti-tamper mechanism to ensure that the large dataset has not been changed. The word 'tree' is used to refer to a branching data structure in computer science, as seen in the image below. According to Andreas M. Antonopoulos, in the Bitcoin protocol,
"Merkle trees are used to summarize all the transactions in a block, producing an overall digital fingerprint of the entire set of transactions, providing a very efficient process to verify whether a transaction is included in a block."
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