Efficient Merkle-Tree Consistent Accumulator

Anna Mendonca; Hudson Shi; Triet Huynh; Ivan Pryvalov; Amir Herzberg

Paper 2026/673

Efficient Merkle-Tree Consistent Accumulator

Anna Mendonca, University of Connecticut

Hudson Shi, University of Connecticut

Triet Huynh, University of Connecticut

Ivan Pryvalov, Brandenburg University of Technology & University of Luxembourg

Amir Herzberg, University of Connecticut

Abstract

A consistent accumulator computes a digest for a dynamically-growing set of elements, with a proof of consistency of the new digest with the previous digests. Consistent accumulators are in wide use, in particular, by Certificate Transparency (CT), which is part of the Web PKI, and in blockchains. We present a significantly more efficient design for a consistent accumulator. Our design is compatible with the CT specifications; similarly to the widely-used, open-source CT implementation, it uses a Merkle tree, but much more efficiently. We provide open source implementation, security analysis and experimental evaluation showing the performance improvements.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Published elsewhere. DSN 2026
Keywords: Merkle tree Cryptographic accumulators Certificate Transparency Proof-of-inclusion Keyed accumulators
Contact author(s): anna mendonca @ uconn edu
ivan pryvalov @ b-tu de
History: 2026-05-07: last of 3 revisions; 2026-04-06: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2026/673
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2026/673,
      author = {Anna Mendonca and Hudson Shi and Triet Huynh and Ivan Pryvalov and Amir Herzberg},
      title = {Efficient Merkle-Tree Consistent Accumulator},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2026/673},
      year = {2026},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/673}
}