There are both kinds. A trie is a prefix tree, which has benefits for space efficiency when you want to store values with a lot of common prefixes. Ethereum use

There are both kinds. A trie is a prefix tree, which has benefits for space efficiency when you want to store values with a lot of common prefixes. Ethereum uses a mix of a Patricia Trie with Merkle Tree to get a combination of both: https://medium.com/codechain/modified-merkle-patricia-trie-how-ethereum-saves-a-state-e6d7555078dd https://medium.com/codechain/modified-merkle-patricia-trie-h... OTOH, the wikipedia article they link to seems to imply a regular Merkle tree. I guess it's not possible to really tell without knowing which Merkle tree/trie library they use.