What Is a Merkle Root and Its Purpose?

A Merkle Root, or hash tree root, is a single hash derived from a Merkle tree, which is a data structure used to efficiently summarize and verify the integrity of large sets of data. In a blockchain, the Merkle Root in the block header summarizes all the transactions in that block.

This allows for quick and secure verification that a specific transaction is included in the block without downloading all transactions.