Glossary
Verkle Tree
A Merkle-tree variant using polynomial commitments instead of hashes, producing dramatically smaller witnesses — central to Ethereum's stateless-client roadmap.
In a Merkle tree, opening a leaf requires sibling hashes at every level — proof size grows logarithmically. In a Verkle tree, each internal node is a polynomial commitment (KZG or IPA) over its children, and opening any leaf produces a near-constant-size proof no matter how big the tree.
That property makes Verkle trees the natural fit for stateless clients: a block can include a single small witness that proves every state access it makes. Ethereum's transition to Verkle tries is on the roadmap behind a series of EIPs.