Merkle Hash Grids Instead of Merkle Trees

Abstract

Merkle grids are a new data organization that replicates the functionality of Merkle trees while reducing their transmission and storage costs by up to 50 percent. All Merkle grids organize the objects whose conformity they monitor in a square array. They add row and column hashes to it such that (a) all row hashes contain the hash of the concatenation of the hashes of all the objects in their respective row and (b) all column hashes contain the hash of the concatenation of the hashes of all the objects in their respective column. In addition, a single signed master hash contains the hash of the concatenation of all row and column hashes. Extended Merkle grids add two auxiliary Merkle trees to speed up searches among both row hashes and column hashes. While both basic and extended Merkle grids perform authentication of all blocks better than Merkle trees, only extended Merkle grids can locate individual non-conforming objects or authenticate a single non-conforming object as fast as Merkle trees.