Understanding Merkle Trees: a Rust Implementation with Blockchain Examples

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

You have probably seen Merkle trees mentioned in blockchain or distributed‑systems contexts, but most explanations are frustratingly generic: they never really show how Merkle trees work or why they are needed in the first place.

I dug a bit deeper and built a simple implementation of a Merkle tree in Rust with examples (including Simple Payment Verification as used in blockchains). The accompanying blog post explains the algorithms and data structure with enough rigor and depth to be useful for understanding inclusion proofs, tree construction, and verification.

The post also briefly covers basic Bitcoin concepts and how Simplified Payment Verification works, so no prior blockchain knowledge is required.

Resources

• Blog post: Merkle Trees and Blockchain Verification
• Implementation: github.com/amoilanen/merkle-tree

The library is intentionally not production‑ready; limitations and simplifications are discussed in the post. For production use, consider rs‑merkle. The main purpose of this implementation is educational, making it easier to approach and understand more robust libraries like rs‑merkle.

Feedback on the Rust code or explanations is welcome.