Blockchain for V2X: Applications and Architectures

Modern vehicles rely on data from a vast array of sensors such as radar and GPS equipment that can be shared with surrounding vehicles and other interested parties. Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) is the collection of systems that enable such communication. Although this data sharing has the potential to improve both the safety and efficiency of vehicles, ensuring that what is shared has not been altered, deleted, forged, leaked, or otherwise tampered with remains a challenging problem. Today, blockchain technology allows a system’s participants to come to an agreement (consensus) on the state of the system and its data in a decentralized, trustless manner. This new technology may be capable of securing V2X data, as well as enabling other useful V2X services such as payments. However, the V2X ecosystem poses several unique challenges that complicate the application of blockchain technology, not least of which is the vast number of communications that any proposed blockchain network will need to support. This paper gives an overview of V2X and blockchain technology, explores potential applications of blockchain within the V2X domain, and justifies its importance. It also reviews, analyzes, and discusses various blockchain architectures that could support V2X applications. Though there is a place for blockchain in the V2X environment, currently there is no robust or mature blockchain architecture available that could support the entire ecosystem’s needs. As such, this paper proposes novel directions for future research towards the creation of such a blockchain.