I'm pretty sure I remember either Gregory Maxwell or Andrew Miller suggesting it to me first, and I think it might be the latter's idea originally. (at least in

I'm pretty sure I remember either Gregory Maxwell or Andrew Miller suggesting it to me first, and I think it might be the latter's idea originally. (at least in the Bitcoin space) Andrew has done a lot of work on "merkelizing" data structures: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~amiller/gpads/ http://www.cs.umd.edu/~amiller/gpads/