Merkle trees and Verkle trees

You have a large set of records. You want to publish a short commitment now, and later convince someone of one record without sending the set. That is the job of an authenticated data structure. A hash commits to one string. SHA-256 of one blob is a fixed fingerprint of that blob. To check it, hash the blob again and compare. A match says this is the same string. It says almost nothing about any other string: a different payment, or the rest of a file, is a different hash, and this fingerprint does not contain those bytes.