John D. Cook • 1/9/2026

Compressing a set of hash values

This technical article examines methods for compressing a set of hash values into fewer bits than the raw storage requires. It explains the core idea of sorting hashes and encoding the gaps between them, leading into a detailed discussion of Golomb-Rice coding. The piece covers encoding/decoding steps, provides a concrete example, and mentions real-world applications like Golomb-Coded Sets in the Bitcoin protocol (BIP 158).

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#Data Compression #Golomb Rice Coding #Hash Sets