A hash tree or Merkle tree is a tree in which every leaf node is labelled with the cryptographic hash of a data block, and every non-leaf node is labelled with the cryptographic hash of the labels of its child nodes.
Hash trees can be used to verify any kind of data stored, handled and transferred in and between computers. They can help ensure that data blocks received from other peers in a peer-to-peer network are received undamaged and unaltered, and even to check that the other peers do not lie and send fake blocks.
The principal advantage of a Merkle tree is that each branch of the tree can be checked independently without requiring nodes to download the entire tree or the entire data set. Moreover, Merkle trees help in reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred while checking for inconsistencies among replicas.
DynamoDB uses Merkle trees for anti-entropy as follows: Each node maintains a separate Merkle tree for each key range (the set of keys covered by a virtual node) it hosts. This allows nodes to compare whether the keys within a key range are up-to-date. In this scheme, two nodes exchange the root of the Merkle tree corresponding to the key ranges that they host in common. Subsequently, using the tree traversal scheme described above the nodes determine if they have any differences and perform the appropriate synchronization action
