A review of privacy-aware blockchain architectures for vehicular energy trading networks

In the current rapidly shifting tech environment, energy management systems evolves at a brisk pace. Vehicles are no longer for transportation but have turned into important actors in modern energy grids, where they produce, store and exchange power through innovations like Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) schemes. Yet, these new breakthroughs also introduce a unique set of challenges. Traditional setups still rely on centralized trust models, resulting in inefficiencies and security gaps owing to limited transparency and auditability. Blockchain introduce decentralization and trust, keeping transaction records unchangeable, and enabling automated agreements through smart contracts. While this makes blockchain an attractive option for boosting the security, and transparency of energy trading, it does not inherently protect user privacy. This paper systematically surveys blockchain-based energy trading in vehicular networks, aiming to reconcile transparency and decentralization with strong privacy, security, and scalability. We develop a unified taxonomy that organizes the space across trading frameworks, core components (consensus, privacy/confidentiality, security including mutual authentication and Sybil resistance), and system design features (algorithmic strategies, incentive mechanisms, and network architectures). Through a structured review, we compare and categorize existing schemes, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, and crucially, identify concrete gaps with suggesting future directions to make these technologies work better together.