**5. Conclusions**

The integrity and credibility of the digital evidence in a single process for managing the chain of custody are critical components of these operations (or chain of evidence). The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy of fuzzy hashing algorithms inside blockchain technology, as opposed to conventional cryptographic hash algorithms, in preserving the integrity of digital evidence in image forensics for assessing similarities. We developed and tested a prototype of a forensic chain model based on a hyperledger composer. According to the performance evaluation, fuzzy hash-based blockchains proved to be an effective support for the chain of custody process due to their ability to sustain a realistic workload with a manageable overhead in terms of memory used to store the chain and their ability to handle the chain of custody-related uncertainty. Future work includes testing the efficiency of the suggested framework when handling a large number of digital pieces of evidence.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, S.D., H.E. and S.M.; methodology, M.A., A.I. and H.E.; software, M.A., A.I. and H.E.; validation, S.D., H.E. and S.M.; formal analysis, S.D., M.A., A.I. and H.E.; investigation, S.D., M.A. and A.I.; resources, S.D., H.E. and S.M.; data curation, M.A., A.I. and H.E.; writing—Original draft preparation, S.D., M.A., A.I. and H.E.; writing—Review and editing, S.D. and S.M., visualization, M.A., A.I. and H.E.; supervision, S.D. and S.M.; project administration, M.A., A.I. and H.E.; funding acquisition, M.A., A.I. and H.E. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable. **Data Availability Statement:** The study did not report any data.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
