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Incremental Merkle Tree

Definition

An Incremental Merkle Tree is a data structure that allows for the efficient addition of new data elements while maintaining a verifiable cryptographic proof of all contained data. Unlike standard Merkle trees, which require recalculating the entire tree after an update, incremental versions permit appending new leaves and updating the root hash without recomputing everything. This efficiency is crucial for dynamic data sets. It ensures data integrity with reduced computational overhead.