🔍 Merkle Proofs: Verify Without Downloading Everything
Understand how SPV wallets verify transactions without the full blockchain
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0 / 5 completed✅ Merkle Proofs
Merkle proofs are the magic that makes light clients possible! Verify a transaction exists without downloading the entire block.
🎯 What is a Merkle Proof?
A Merkle proof is a sequence of hashes that allows you to verify a specific piece of data is part of the Merkle tree, using only the root hash and a few sibling hashes.
You have a block with 1000 transactions (~1 MB). You want to verify TX #573 is in the block, but you only have the block header (80 bytes) with the Merkle root.
🎮 Interactive Proof Verification
Select a transaction to verify, then watch the proof verification process:
📊 Proof Size Comparison
| Transactions | Tree Height | Proof Size | Full Data Size | Efficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 4 | ~128 bytes | ~2.5 KB | 95% smaller |
| 100 | 7 | ~224 bytes | ~25 KB | 99.1% smaller |
| 1,000 | 10 | ~320 bytes | ~250 KB | 99.9% smaller |
| 10,000 | 14 | ~448 bytes | ~2.5 MB | 99.98% smaller |
🔍 Proof Construction Process
💡 Key Benefits
Mobile wallets can verify payments without downloading gigabytes of blockchain data. Essential for adoption!
Verify in O(log n) time and space. For 1 million transactions, only 20 hashes needed!
Can't forge a proof without breaking the hash function. Cryptographically secure verification.
Save 99.9% bandwidth compared to downloading full blocks. Critical for resource-constrained devices.