---
date: '2024-02-08'
description: directed acyclic graph where nodes are content-addressable and immutable, identified by hashing content, used in ipfs, containers, and git.
id: Merkle DAG
modified: 2026-06-05 15:08:20 GMT-04:00
tags:
  - seed
  - technical
title: Merkle DAG
created: '2024-02-08'
published: '2024-02-08'
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slug: thoughts/Merkle-DAG
permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/thoughts/Merkle-DAG.md
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full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt
---
It is a directed acyclic [[thoughts/university/twenty-three-twenty-four/sfwr-2c03/Graphs|graph]] where each node is a version of the content and edges represents the change (diffs)

Each node has an identifier which is the results of hashing the content.

Merkle DAG nodes are _immutable_ and _[[thoughts/Content-addressable storage|content-addressable]]_. Any changes in the node would alter its identifier thus affect all ascendants, which create a different DAG.

Examples of the DAG in action:

- [[thoughts/IPFS]]
- [[thoughts/Containers]]
- [[thoughts/git]]