Ethereum Smart Contract Development

Understanding the hash function and the Merkle tree

Cryptography is the art and science of hiding a message. It is more of an art than a science. Science here just acts as a mere tool to transform an artistic imagination into a mathematical algorithm.

In this section, we will concentrate only on two specific concepts from this immensely vast subject, which will help us to understand the true essence of a blockchain. These are the hash function and Merkle tree. Please note that these are used for verifying integrity, rather than hiding anything.

Let's now understand what a hash function is and how it works. Figure 1.3 illustrates a hash function. As we can see in this figure, a hash function is a one-way mapping:

Figure 1.3: Hash function ...