How Does a Merkle Tree Structure Potentially Improve the Efficiency of Cryptographic Proof?

A Merkle tree structure can improve the efficiency of cryptographic proof by allowing a smart contract to verify the inclusion of a specific piece of data within a larger dataset without processing the entire set. The contract only needs the Merkle root (a single hash) and a small path of hashes (the Merkle proof).

This is useful for oracles reporting many data points in one transaction, as it reduces the on-chain data and computational overhead for verification.