Answer by Erhard Dinhobl for What is the Merkle root?

BE AWARE! The merkle root is important for mining. since the merkle root is the hashed value of ALL transaction hashes from the block, the value of the merkle root is taken into advance when miners do their work. See: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm. Previous hash:

81cd02ab7e569e8bcd9317e2fe99f2de44d49ab2b8851ba4a308000000000000

Here an excerpt of the algorithm there:

>>> import hashlib
>>> header_hex = ("01000000" +
 "81cd02ab7e569e8bcd9317e2fe99f2de44d49ab2b8851ba4a308000000000000" +
 "e320b6c2fffc8d750423db8b1eb942ae710e951ed797f7affc8892b0f1fc122b" +
 "c7f5d74d" +
 "f2b9441a" +
 "42a14695")
>>> header_bin = header_hex.decode('hex')
>>> hash = hashlib.sha256(hashlib.sha256(header_bin).digest()).digest()
>>> hash.encode('hex_codec')
'1dbd981fe6985776b644b173a4d0385ddc1aa2a829688d1e0000000000000000'
>>> hash[::-1].encode('hex_codec')
'00000000000000001e8d6829a8a21adc5d38d0a473b144b6765798e61f98bd1d'

First of all, all values here are in little endian notation, so you have to ready byte per byte from right to left (remember one byte are TWO characters). So the first value is the preivous block hash, then THE MERKLE ROOT, then the creation time and then the bits. To compare the values, just have a look at: https://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000000001e8d6829a8a21adc5d38d0a473b144b6765798e61f98bd1d

Conclusion: The merkle root is implicitly used by the bitcoin blockchain! It playes an important role when it comes into mining!