The growing adoption of renewable energy and small-scale power producers has increased the need for reliable and transparent peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading. Traditional centralized markets often struggle with high transaction fees, limited transparency, and a greater risk of manipulation, which restrict efficient energy distribution. To overcome these issues, this study presents a decentralized P2P trading framework that implements a fully functional blockchain-based trading system with smart grid simulation and demonstrates a prototype machine learning forecasting module (Random Forest, 84% accuracy) designed for future integration. The trading mechanism is developed using Ethereum smart contracts and a custom ERC-20 token, the TUM Energy Coin (TEC), enabling secure and traceable energy exchange. System security is strengthened through dual confirmation steps, role-based access control, and consensus-driven market clearing. A double-sided auction model is used to match buyers and sellers fairly. Real-time grid behavior such as fluctuating loads, prosumer generation, and consumer demand is modeled using MATLAB Simulink to reflect realistic operating conditions. To enhance decision-making, a Random Forest model is integrated for load forecasting and dynamic pricing, achieving an accuracy of 84%. The simulation results show improved transaction throughput, more stable pricing, and strong resilience against false-data injection attacks. The primary novelty of this work lies in (1) an entirely operational and validated blockchain-trading system simulation with synchronized time using Simulink, (2) a working Random Forest forecasting tool demonstrating feasibility for incorporation in the future, and (3) an analysis of the system’s robustness in the case of FDIA attacks. The authors point out that the ML component used is a prototype and not yet integrated into the functioning block chain.
Adoption of peer-to-peer (P2P) trading is very challenging, mainly due to numerous issues and limitations such as lack of trust in the concept and awareness of the technical, economic and social benefits. This paper aims to understand how blockchain technology can address the current issues/limitations of P2P distributed solar energy (DSE) trading. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 community energy stakeholders to confirm and expand the stakeholder issues identified in the literature review. A case representing community energy projects was selected to (1) develop and implement a blockchain system and (2) evaluate its ability to eliminate (or reduce) stakeholder issues and meet stakeholder expectations. A blockchain-enabled P2P trading platform was developed using an Ethereum backend. The system clearly demonstrated its ability to deliver full or partial solutions to 12 stakeholder issues. Two stakeholder issues are unable to be addressed via the blockchain platform since they uncovered the weaknesses of blockchain technology. The P2P trading platform has also demonstrated its ability to facilitate decentralized trading and data management. The outcome of this study indicates the areas of P2P trading projects that can be improved by the application of blockchain technology.
A multi-agent transaction optimization decision-making method based on blockchain Berge-NS equilibrium is proposed, aiming to protect user interests and achieve carbon reduction objectives. Firstly, by improving the utility function of electricity users and quantifying the impact of blockchain technology on the electricity utility of market entities, a blockchain based P2P electricity trading architecture for microgrids is constructed, and a blockchain network and utility function for electricity users are designed; Secondly, the Evolutionary Game Theory based on bounded rationality decision-making is introduced to construct a Berge-NS game model on both sides of electricity supply and demand. The distributed iterative algorithm and step size control method are used to solve the Nash equilibrium, and the strategy evolution of demand side subjects in the game process is studied through dynamic processes; Finally, numerical simulations were conducted to analyze the trading strategies of bilateral contract markets, centralized trading markets, and dual layer decision-making models for electricity sellers, verifying the feasibility and effectiveness of the models and algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed multi-agent trading Berge-NS decision-making method for microgrid electricity market exhibits certain performance advantages in reducing carbon emissions, lowering user electricity costs, and improving user satisfaction.
C. N. He, H. D. Chen, H. J. Tian, J. Zhang · 5 authors
This study investigates low-carbon investment strategies in power supply chains under the combined influence of carbon quota mechanisms (CQM) and blockchain technology (BCT). A two-echelon system consisting of a power generator and an electricity retailer is modeled, and four decision scenarios are constructed by considering blockchain adoption under both the grandfathering method (GFM) and benchmarking method (BMM). A Stackelberg game framework is employed to analyze the interactions among low-carbon technology investment, low-carbon electricity promotion, market demand, and enterprise profitability. Results show that the BMM consistently induces higher low-carbon investment levels, stronger market demand, and greater retailer profitability than the GFM, regardless of blockchain adoption. Furthermore, blockchain-enabled information traceability exhibits a significant threshold effect: when implementation costs remain below a critical level, trusted information transmission enhances consumer green trust, stimulates demand for low-carbon electricity, and improves the economic performance of supply-chain participants. Sensitivity analysis further demonstrates that consumer green trust, low-carbon preference, and responsiveness to low-carbon promotion positively influence both emissionreduction efforts and enterprise profitability, whereas excessive blockchain deployment costs weaken these benefits. The proposed framework provides a quantitative methodology for analyzing information-enabled lowcarbon decision making and coordinated investment strategies in modern power systems.
Stephen Oko Gyan Torto, Rupendra Kumar Pachauri, Jai Govind Singh, Shubham Tiwari · 7 authors
Global projects are mobilizing technologies to fight power generation curtailment and smooth demand by exploiting excess energy via transactive energy management and control. Sharing and transferring energy between microgrids helps manufacturers and businesses create energy autonomously. The transition to Multi-Vector Multi-Agent Energy Systems (MMV-ES) demands a paradigm shift from traditional centralized control to decentralized, market-based coordination. Transactive Energy Management (TEM) has emerged as a key enabler in this context, supporting local flexibility, peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, and integrated energy vectors across distributed assets. This review systematically decomposes and classifies the existing state of TEM from several perspectives: the market topology, the interaction of the agent, game-theoretic models and the real deployment challenges. Moreover, two game-theory formulations (cooperative and non-cooperative) were given special attention and a detailed comparison between Shapley value and Nucleolus was provided as approaches for fair cost allocation. To enhance the adaptability of the market and the overall efficiency of the system, we introduce the Transactive Energy Reformulation Model (TE-RM), a hybrid model combining AI-powered congestion pricing with coalition formation and fairness-based incentives. The comparative tables in this paper summarize TEM and TE-RM's strengths and weaknesses and compare it to the centralized and conventional DSM methodologies. Lastly, key research gaps including scalability, regulatory fit, and AI model interpretability are reviewed, and future directions are proposed for the integration of future advanced technologies (e.g., reinforcement learning, blockchain, IoT) to enable stable, fair and interoperable energy markets.
The modern energy transition has outpaced the control and optimization frameworks built to govern it. As power and energy systems fragment into webs of renewable generators, storage operators, flexible loads, and carbon-constrained firms, the deterministic, single-optimizer models that once sufficed buckle against nonlinearity, bounded rationality, and strategic conflict among parties who learn and revise as they go. Evolutionary game theory (EGT), which traces how strategies propagate through populations by imitation and selection rather than instantaneous optimization, offers a route through this difficulty—one this review develops across three scales of low-carbon coordination central to cleaner production: enterprise-level industrial symbiosis, system-level smart energy operation, and market-level carbon governance. We synthesize three decades of theory alongside the recent fusion of EGT with artificial intelligence, where deep reinforcement learning approximates high-dimensional payoffs, federated learning lets rival firms co-train models without surrendering proprietary data, and blockchain underwrites decentralized mechanism execution. The synthesis is accompanied by two illustrative numerical case studies, constructed for this review rather than drawn from the surveyed literature, whose quantitative outputs are reported below as demonstrations of modeled behavior rather than as empirical measurements. In the first of these, cooperative emergence in industrial symbiosis hinges on critical thresholds that travel from 0.15 to 0.75 as subsidies and transaction costs vary, with anchor-enterprise targeting accelerating cooperation 2.4-fold while cutting outcome variance 3-fold. In smart energy coordination, AI-enhanced learning buys 32 to 41% faster convergence, yet pays 25 to 39% larger oscillations—a speed–stability tension whose resolution lives in a narrow learning-rate band near 0.08 to 0.12, outside which either sluggishness or instability takes hold. Carbon-market behavior turns on price thresholds: emitters switch abruptly from buying quotas toward investing in abatement once the clearing price clears firm-specific triggers, a discrete state switch that smooth equilibrium analysis misses entirely. Across all three domains, fragmented data, path dependence, and regime-switching dynamics recur as the binding constraints on modeling and on governance alike. Four mechanisms prove invariant to scale—the decisive weight of initial conditions, the catalytic leverage of well-positioned anchor agents, the equilibrium-shaping force of institutional design, and the computational reach added by AI integration—which suggests that insight earned in one domain transfers to the others. We close by mapping open problems in heterogeneity modeling, verification under deep uncertainty, and the still-unrealized coupling of digital twins with privacy-preserving learning. EGT emerges not as retrospective description but as prospective guidance for the cooperative transitions on which credible decarbonization depends.
As of 2024, 730 million people worldwide lacked electricity access, roughly eight in ten of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Closing this gap requires engineering approaches suited to the technical, financial, and institutional constraints of low-resource settings, not conventional grid extension alone. This paper reviews four engineering pathways expanding renewable energy access in developing countries — decentralized mini-grids, IoT-enabled pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar financing, frugal engineering, and AI-assisted smart-grid digitalization — using case evidence from Kenya, India, and East Africa's PAYG sector.
ComputeGrid is a concept paper and feasibility framework for a utility-integrated network of provider-owned compute nodes hosted at commercial buildings, public facilities, and — through a heat-recovery variant — homes. Hosts receive full metered reimbursement of node electricity plus a separate credit; nodes are aggregated by an orchestration and settlement platform (ComputeGrid OS) into one secure, grid-aware, dispatchable compute layer beneath hyperscale data centers. Version 3.0 evaluates the concept against two structural facts: residential retail electricity is the most expensive power a compute operator can buy, and a decade of distributed-compute ventures (spot marketplaces, deploy-first token networks, and heat-recovery operators) shows which configurations survive. The paper therefore leads with commercial and public-building deployment, admits residential nodes only where waste heat displaces heating the host would otherwise purchase, and requires every site to pass at least one of four economic qualifiers — near-commercial power price, monetizable heat, a priced locality premium, or measurable grid-flexibility value — before hardware is committed. The paper includes a two-sided illustrative unit ledger, host consumer-protection and property-rights baselines, rules preventing host-purchased “income” hardware, a staged offtake-first pilot plan with published kill criteria, and a claim framework that treats all economics as illustrative pending Stage 0 diligence. It is an open concept paper, not peer reviewed; no field deployment or empirical dataset is reported. Version 1.0 drafting was assisted by OpenAI ChatGPT; Versions 2.0 and 3.0 critique and revision were assisted by Anthropic Claude under the author’s direction. The author is responsible for the final claims and release.
O presente artigo analisa o custo-benefício energético de três mecanismos de consenso centrais no ecossistema de criptoativos – Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Stake (PoS) e o modelo híbrido baseado em Proof-of-History (PoH) combinado com PoS – examinando como as diferenças de consumo energético entre esses paradigmas se relacionam a propriedades de segurança, desempenho e sustentabilidade econômica. A partir de dados recentes sobre o consumo energético de redes públicas de referência – entre as quais o Bitcoin, o Ethereum antes e depois da transição para PoS (Merge) e a Solana – discute-se em que medida a evolução dos desenhos de consenso permite reduzir o uso de eletricidade por ordens de grandeza, sem necessariamente comprometer segurança e descentralização. A metodologia combina revisão bibliográfica de estudos acadêmicos e relatórios técnicos sobre consumo energético em blockchains, análise de estimativas consolidadas de uso anual de eletricidade e de energia por transação e discussão conceitual dos trade-offs entre eficiência energética, robustez criptográfica, requisitos de hardware e impactos regulatórios. As evidências empíricas revisadas indicam que o Bitcoin, ancorado em PoW, mantém consumo anual estimado em torno de 120 a 130 terawatt-hora (TWh), ao passo que o Ethereum, após a migração para PoS em setembro de 2022, reduziu seu consumo em mais de 99,9%, operando com menos de 0,01 TWh por ano. Relatórios de eficiência energética apontam que redes que combinam PoH e PoS, a exemplo da Solana, apresentam consumo de energia por transação da ordem de centenas de joules, valor inferior tanto ao de redes PoW quanto ao de diversas redes PoS de menor vazão, embora existam ressalvas metodológicas e debates acerca dos efeitos de centralização de infraestrutura associados a requisitos elevados de hardware e conectividade. Conclui-se que PoS e esquemas híbridos com PoH oferecem vantagens substanciais em termos de eficiência energética, mas que a avaliação de custo-benefício deve incorporar conjuntamente a segurança econômica, a distribuição de poder entre participantes, a maturidade do ecossistema e o alinhamento com agendas de sustentabilidade que tendem a moldar a evolução da infraestrutura Web3 nas próximas décadas.
We estimate the causal price elasticity of gas demand on Ethereum mainnet (L1) and Arbitrum One (L2), a quantity necessary for calibrating fee mechanism simulations, evaluating resource pricing reforms, and explaining observed usage patterns. A two-way fixed effects panel regression instrumented by each wallet's own lagged base fee removes the congestion-driven endogeneity that causes naive regressions to substantially underestimate demand sensitivity. On Ethereum mainnet (full year 2025), the pooled IV elasticity is -0.006***, near-inelastic: a 10% fee increase reduces total gas demand by approximately 0.06%. On Arbitrum One (October 2025--April 2026), the pooled IV elasticity is -0.036**. Both chains are inelastic in the aggregate, with L2 measurably more responsive than L1. A per-resource decomposition of L2 demand reveals elasticities ranging from modestly elastic computation (-0.027*) to -0.27*** for refunds, with storage growth (-0.15***) and calldata (-0.06*) in between. Behavioral clustering identifies always-on protocol wallets as near-inelastic and high-volume operators as substantially more responsive, with cluster-level elasticities up to roughly 6x the pooled estimate. These results establish an empirical foundation for downstream simulations and for evaluating fee mechanism designs.
Abstract While blockchain technology is expected to reduce transaction costs, network congestion execution costs remain understudied in operations management. Analyzing 62,142 Ethereum transactions from seven firms (January–March 2026), we study "on-chain peak shaving"—scheduling transactions toward low-congestion windows to reduce gas fee exposure. Gas fees peak at 10 AM ET, driven by speculative-arbitrage rather than operational activity. Firm scheduling responses vary: only three firms transact off-peak, while four transact during peak windows due to deadlines or governance cycles. This heterogeneity is driven by transaction deferrability and gas intensity. We formalize these into an On-Chain Scheduling Matrix mapping firms to four regimes that predict fee savings and residual cost floors. Theoretically, we extend Transaction Cost Economics to account for time-varying execution costs from congestion externalities, classifying gas fees as execution costs in timing but maladaptation costs in origin. Ultimately, managing gas fees requires systematic operational planning akin to energy procurement.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading requires network-aware coordination because transactions are physically realized through distribution networks. However, sensitivity-based coordination causes a confidentiality-verifiability tradeoff, as network sensitivities may reveal vulnerable components while undisclosed sensitivities prevent participants from verifying utility-provided transaction guides. This paper proposes a zero-knowledge-proof-based method for verifying the computational integrity of network-constrained transaction guides with respect to committed private network data, without exposing network-sensitivity information. The guide defines admissible injection and withdrawal volumes derived from sign-decomposed sensitivity matrices while satisfying balance, voltage, line-flow, and optimality conditions. These conditions are encoded in an arithmetic circuit, represented as R1CS constraints and a quadratic arithmetic program, and verified using a bilinear pairing. Blockchain commitments bind the approved circuit, public inputs, statement identifiers, proof, and verification result for tamper-evident auditability. The proposed proof certifies correct guide computation from committed network data; the authenticity of the committed network data is handled through an explicit registration and attestation assumption. Case studies on a modified IEEE 33-bus system show satisfaction of network constraints after clearing, rejection of public-input and witness-inconsistency attacks, and practical on-chain overhead, with an 806-byte proof.
Energy demand in urban and metropolitan regions has been growing rapidly, often exceeding production capacity, leading to imbalances in energy distribution. Existing peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading models, along with classical algorithms like FCFS and best-fit frameworks in smart cities, address some of these issues. However, they often face challenges such as limited transaction success percentage, inefficiencies in price matching, and privacy concerns during trades. To overcome these limitations, a framework is proposed that integrates game-theoretic pricing-based collaborative trading with Nash equilibrium and an additional pricing mechanism (CoGap) to enhance fairness and transaction success percentage in decentralized energy markets. The proposed framework is implemented on an Ethereum-based blockchain using Solidity smart contracts, incorporating cryptographic security through the Keccak-256 hash function and privacy-preserving zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). Moreover, it ensures security and price negotiations while maximizing transaction efficiency. Simulation results demonstrate that CoGap consistently achieves higher transaction success rates compared to four state-of-the-art collaborative energy trading schemes.
Large controllable loads, such as Bitcoin-mining facilities, are increasingly viewed as valuable sources of power-system flexibility, yet the conditions under which this flexibility is realized remain poorly understood. We examine this issue in the Texas power market, where large loads face both wholesale electricity prices and incentives created by coincident-peak-based transmission charges. We find that mining load declines as costs rise across both channels, and this response is moderated by hashprice, a measure of expected revenue for Bitcoin miners. When hashprice is higher, mining load is less responsive to electricity-sector costs. This pattern is consistent with aggregate mining load arising from heterogeneous devices operated around distinct breakeven points. The wholesale-price response illustrates this mechanism most clearly. Mining load remains largely online at low electricity prices but begins to decline once prices exceed an implied curtailment threshold, and higher hashprice shifts this threshold to higher wholesale prices. Bitcoin miners therefore respond to electricity-sector costs, but the available flexibility varies with revenue conditions in the crypto-financial sector. Treating such loads as stable demand-response resources may overstate their available flexibility.
A tokenised energy market settles payment against metered dispatch, but the meter reading is the prosumer's private information: a self-interested prosumer can report more energy than it supplied and be paid for the difference. The companion papers in this programme assume meter integrity — truthful reporting — and build settlement, participation, and delivery contracts on top of it. This paper derives the verification contract that makes the assumption hold. A prosumer dispatches a quantity it observes privately and reports a possibly inflated figure to the settlement layer; the grid-telemetry layer can audit a report at a cost, detecting a discrepancy with a probability that reflects sensor accuracy, and a detected misreport forfeits a posted verification stake. We treat the audit probability, the stake, and the sensor accuracy as the designer's instruments and characterise the verification that makes truthful reporting weakly dominant at minimum cost. The baseline assumes a margin-independent detection probability and one-sided audit error (false negatives possible, false positives excluded); both are stated and the general margin-dependent condition is given. First, truthful reporting is weakly dominant if and only if the expected forfeiture covers the largest gain from admissible over-reporting, αφB ≥ Pm̄ (strict under strict inequality), where α is the audit probability, φ the per-audit detection probability, B the stake, and m̄ the largest admissible over-report; with a one-unit maximum this is αφB ≥ P (Proposition 1). Second, along this deterrence frontier the audit probability is α = Pm̄/(φB), and once the stake is itself chosen against its capital carry the least-cost interior contract is B* = √(κPm̄/(ρφ)), α* = √(ρPm̄/(κφ)), total cost 2√(ρκPm̄/φ), all decreasing in detection accuracy, so accurate telemetry drives the audit rate, the stake, and the cost down together (Theorem 1). Third, sensor accuracy is itself a procurable instrument with a convex capital cost, and the cost-minimising accuracy equates marginal sensor capital cost to the marginal audit-opex saving, a capex–opex frontier between better meters and more auditing (Proposition 2). Fourth, the per-report enforcement αφB is exactly the meter-integrity guarantee the companion papers assume; truthful reporting is weakly dominant on the binding frontier and strict under an arbitrarily small slack, so the reported quantity equals the dispatched quantity, discharging that assumption from primitives and closing the stack at its base (Proposition 3). Full proofs are in the online appendix.
Prosumer communities, aggregations of residential and commercial entities equipped with distributed energy resources (DER), including photovoltaic systems, battery storage, and flexible loads, are emerging as critical organizational units in decarbonising smart grid architectures. Managing these communities effectively requires balancing economic efficiency with equity, autonomy, and environmental sustainability, objectives that conventional centralized control methods and existing multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) implementations fail to address simultaneously. This article proposes a value-aligned hierarchical multi-agent reinforcement learning (VA-HMARL) framework as a formally unified architecture that embeds equity (Jain’s Fairness Index J ≥ 0.90), individual autonomy, and carbon sustainability as hard constraints within the MARL reward structure. The framework integrates: a multi-objective Value Alignment Module (VAM) combining economic, fairness, sustainability, and comfort objectives; attention-based implicit coordination for scalable agent interaction; and differentially private federated policy aggregation (ε = 1.0, δ = 10−5) for GDPR-compliant collaborative learning. Simulation on a 20-prosumer community modelled on the IEEE 33-bus feeder over 10 Monte Carlo runs (300 episodes each) demonstrates: a 6.2% energy cost reduction versus the Rule-Based baseline (p = 0.0004); a Jain’s Fairness Index of 0.912 ± 0.031 at policy convergence (final 50 episodes), satisfying the J ≥ 0.90 community equity floor; and an 18.0% reduction in CO2 emissions. The economic efficiency trade-off relative to performance-optimized MARL baselines is limited to 2.4%, within the 5% design target. These results establish VA-HMARL as a technically feasible and ethically grounded paradigm for autonomous decentralized energy governance.
Este artigo analisa o custo‑benefício energético de três mecanismos de consenso centrais no ecossistema de criptoativos: Proof‑of‑Work (PoW), Proof‑of‑Stake (PoS) e Proof‑of‑History (PoH) combinado a PoS, examinando como diferenças de consumo de energia se relacionam a segurança, desempenho e sustentabilidade econômica. A partir de dados recentes sobre consumo energético de redes públicas como Bitcoin, Ethereum antes e depois da transição para PoS e Solana, discute‑se em que medida a evolução dos mecanismos de consenso permite reduzir ordens de grandeza de uso de eletricidade por transação, sem necessariamente comprometer a segurança e a descentralização. A metodologia baseia‑se em revisão bibliográfica de estudos acadêmicos e relatórios técnicos sobre consumo de energia em blockchains, análise de estimativas consolidadas de uso anual de eletricidade e de energia por transação e discussão conceitual de trade‑offs entre eficiência energética, robustez criptográfica, requisitos de hardware e impactos regulatórios. Evidências indicam que o Bitcoin, ancorado em PoW, mantém consumo anual estimado em torno de 120–130 TWh, enquanto o Ethereum, após migrar para PoS em 2022, reduziu seu consumo em mais de 99%, passando a operar com menos de 0,01 TWh por ano. Relatórios de eficiência energética mostram que redes que combinam PoH e PoS, como a Solana, apresentam consumo de energia por transação da ordem de centenas de joules, inferior tanto a redes PoW quanto a muitas redes PoS, embora existam ressalvas metodológicas e discussões sobre centralização de infraestrutura. Conclui‑se que PoS e esquemas híbridos com PoH oferecem vantagens substanciais em termos de eficiência energética, mas a avaliação de custo‑benefício precisa incorporar conjuntamente segurança econômica, distribuição de poder, maturidade de ecossistema e alinhamento com agendas de sustentabilidade e descarbonização que tendem a moldar a evolução da infraestrutura Web3.<br>
Sadly Syamsuddin, Salama Manjang, Muhammad Bachtiar Nappu, Ady Wahyudi Paundu
The increasing demand for sustainable and decentralized energy systems has driven the adoption of blockchain technology in microgrid networks. However, conventional consensus mechanisms, such as proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS), suffer from high energy consumption, limited adaptability, and fairness issues, which hinder their suitability for dynamic microgrid environments. This paper proposes a novel consensus mechanism, proof of dynamic influence and participation activity (PoDIPA), which integrates prosumers’ real-time participation activity and historical influence into the validator selection process. The proposed mechanism is evaluated through deterministic simulations and compared with PoW and PoS in terms of energy efficiency, transaction processing time, and security resilience. Simulation results demonstrate that PoDIPA significantly reduces average energy consumption and adapts more rapidly to network dynamics while maintaining security performance comparable to existing consensus mechanisms under majority attack scenarios. Although PoDIPA exhibits higher short-term variability due to its adaptive nature, the overall efficiency–stability trade-off remains favorable. These results indicate that PoDIPA is a promising consensus solution for supporting fair, energy-efficient, and decentralized energy trading in future microgrid systems.
Blockchain users pay transaction fees to miners or block proposers who validate and add transactions to the distributed ledger. Ethereum introduces the concept of gas to decouple transaction costs from Ether's price volatility, calculating fees based on gas units. The current mechanism defined by Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 dynamically adjusts the base fee according to block gas usage. However, its rule-based adjustment can lead to unstable gas consumption when demand fluctuates within a narrow range and struggles to respond efficiently to sudden demand spikes, such as during non-fungible token (NFT) drops. To address these limitations, we propose a deep reinforcement learning-based transaction fee mechanism that learns an adaptive base-fee update policy. Our approach maintains gas consumption close to the target level across various demand scenarios and stabilizes transaction fees and gas usage per block even under abrupt demand shifts. These results demonstrate that the proposed method provides a more adaptive and resilient fee adjustment mechanism compared to the current EIP-1559 model.
The increasing penetration of intermittent renewable energy demands innovative solutions to maintain grid stability, resilience, and security in the body of smart cities. This paper presents a novel framework that redefines Bitcoin mining as a form of virtual energy storage, a flexible and controllable load capable of delivering large-scale demand response services, positioning it as a competitive alternative to traditional energy storage systems, including electrical, mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrochemical storage solutions. By strategically aligning mining activities with grid conditions, Bitcoin mining can absorb excess electricity during periods of oversupply, converting it into digital assets, and reduce operations during times of scarcity, effectively emulating the behavior of conventional energy storage systems without the associated capital expenditures and material requirements. Beyond its operational flexibility, this paper explores the cyber–physical benefits of integrating Bitcoin mining into the power transmission systems as a defensive mechanism against false data injection (FDI) cyberattacks in smart city infrastructure. To achieve this goal, a decentralized and adaptive control strategy is proposed, in which mining loads dynamically adjust based on authenticated grid-state information, thereby improving system observability and hindering adversarial efforts to disrupt state estimation. In addition, to handle the proposed approach, this paper introduces a high-performance algorithm, a combination of quantum-augmented particle swarm optimization and wavelet-oriented whale optimization (QAPSO-WOWO). Simulation results confirm that strategic deployment of mining loads improves grid sustainability by utilizing curtailed renewables, enhances resilience by mitigating load-generation imbalances, and bolsters cybersecurity by reducing the impacts of FDI attacks. This work lays the foundation for a transdisciplinary paradigm shift, positioning Bitcoin mining not as a passive energy consumer but as an active participant in securing and stabilizing the future power grid in smart cities.
Large-scale Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are increasingly essential as Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) assume ancillary service duties once supplied by conventional generation, yet scaling a VPP exposes a persistent trilemma among economic efficiency, data privacy, and operational security. Centralized coordination can approach optimal revenue but requires collecting fine-grained DER operational data and creates a single point of compromise. Federated Learning (FL) mitigates raw data centralization by keeping measurements and experience local, but it introduces a fragile trust assumption that the aggregator will correctly and fairly combine model updates. This trust gap is acute in reinforcement learning-based VPP control because aggregation deviations, including selectively dropping updates, manipulating weights, replaying stale models, or injecting a replacement model, can silently bias the learned policy and degrade both profit and compliance. We propose a zero-knowledge federated reinforcement learning framework for trustless VPP coordination in which each DER trains a local deep reinforcement learning agent to solve a multi-objective dispatch problem that balances ancillary service revenue against battery degradation under operational and grid constraints, while the global aggregation step is made externally verifiable. In each round, participants bind membership via signed receipts and commit to their updates, and the aggregator produces a zk-SNARK, proving that the published global parameters equal the agreed aggregation rule applied to the receipt-bound set of committed updates under a fixed-point encoding with range constraints. Verification is lightweight and can be performed independently by each DER, removing the need to trust the aggregator for aggregation integrity without centralizing raw DER operational data or trajectories. The proposed design does not aim to hide model updates from the aggregator. Instead, it provides external verifiability of the aggregation computation while keeping raw measurements and local experience. We formalize the threat model and verifiable security properties for aggregation correctness and update inclusion, present a circuit construction with proof complexity characterized by model dimension and fleet size, and evaluate the approach in power and cyber co-simulation on the IEEE 33 bus feeder with ancillary service signals. Results show near-centralized economic performance under benign conditions and improved robustness to aggregator side deviations compared to standard federated reinforcement learning.
Background: Blockchain and Multi-Agent System (MAS) are increasingly combined to support decentralized, secure, and autonomous peer-to-peer energy trading in microgrid environments. Objectives: This systematic review investigates how blockchain and MAS are integrated to support microgrid energy trading, identifies architectural and operational models, examines real-world implementations, and highlights technical, regulatory, and security challenges. Unlike prior reviews that focus on blockchain or MAS in isolation, this study provides a unified and comparative analysis of their joint integration. Methods: Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a systematic search was conducted in IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect, with the last search performed on 10 January 2025. Eligible studies focused on blockchain–MAS integration in microgrid energy trading; non-energy and non-microgrid applications were excluded. Study selection was performed independently by two reviewers, and methodological quality was assessed using an adapted Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) checklist. A narrative synthesis categorized integration levels, blockchain platforms, MAS roles, and implementation contexts. Results: A total of 104 studies were included. Three dominant integration levels were identified—basic, intermediate, and advanced—distinguished by how decision-making responsibilities are distributed between MAS and smart contracts. Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric were the most commonly used platforms. MAS agents perform concrete operational functions such as bid and offer generation, price negotiation, matching, and local energy optimization, fundamentally transforming control and monitoring processes. By enabling distributed, intelligent agents to perform real-time sensing, analysis, and response, an MAS enhances system resilience and adaptability. This architecture allows for proactive fault detection, dynamic resource allocation, and coherent, large-scale operations without centralized bottlenecks. Blockchain ensured transparency, trust, and secure transaction execution. Major challenges include scalability constraints, interoperability limitations with legacy grids, regulatory uncertainty, and real-time performance issues. Limitations: Most included studies were simulation-based, with limited real-world deployment and substantial heterogeneity in evaluation metrics. Conclusions: Blockchain–MAS integration shows strong potential for secure, transparent, and decentralized microgrid energy trading. Addressing scalability, regulatory frameworks, and interoperability is essential for large-scale adoption. Future research should emphasize real-world validation, standardized integration architectures, and AI-enabled MAS optimization. Funding: No external funding. Registration: This systematic review was not registered.
Ashkan Safari, Amir Aminzadeh Ghavifekr, Amir Rikhtegar Ghiasi
• A private Ethereum-based discrete-event blockchain is developed for P2P energy trading. • Smart contracts using Solidity automate market matching, settlement, and tokenization. • Platform integrates ERC-20 token framework to support secure energy transactions. • Gas fee modeling and minimization are implemented for cost-efficient operations. • Validated on IEEE 14-Bus multi-community system with real dynamic market behavior. Due to the fast growth in renewable energy production, which enables households to sell excess power directly and better manage its intermittent nature, the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy market has become considerably more established, as it’s aligned with the decentralization and digitalization of power systems and local markets. It’s a system that lets energy consumers and producers trade energy directly with one another. Furthermore, the presence of blockchain technology increases these techno-economic advantages for energy systems, particularly when integrated with P2P energy trading. Consequently, a wide range of works have considered the integration of P2P and blockchain; however, few of them have investigated the full details of this system, including its performance, Transaction (TX) gas fee in a secure and private platform. Following this, the proposed work presents an Ethereum-based discrete event Private blockchain and its integration with P2P energy trading market in a Multi-Community Energy System (MCES). Considered on an IEEE 14-Bus MCES with 3 communities and 20 participating agents (11 consumers, 5 generators, and 4 not participating in the market), the platform uses Web3 and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for execution. Smart contracts, written in Solidity, handle tokenization by Ethereum Request for Comment 20 (ERC-20) standards and market matching/settlement discrete event processes. On the secure performance, the proposed platform is based on Keccak-256 for immutability, while TX gas fees are minimized. Results show synchronized peak demands up to 60 (MW), diurnal Renewable Energy Sources (RES) outputs peaking at 40 (MW), alongside the market prices, and agents’ revenues. Finally, the reliability of the platform is evaluated based on two main metrics of Transaction Success Rate (TSR) = 1 (100%) and Transaction Per Second (TPS) = 3.29, with a primary mode centered at 1.8–2.0 TPS, a secondary peak at 4.0–4.2 TPS.
The subject of research covers the theoretical, methodological, and applied aspects of implementing blockchain technology and smart contracts into microgrid management systems, as well as the automation processes of energy resource exchange between participants of a distributed energy system. The purpose of this work is to investigate the methodological foundations for the application of blockchain and smart contracts in microgrids through the analysis of contemporary scientific research, systematization of approaches to consensus algorithm implementation, classification of smart contracts by application areas, and experimental verification of the proposed solutions. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were addressed: analyzing existing microgrid architectures and management methods; conducting a comparative analysis of consensus algorithms (PoW, PoS, PoA, PBFT, RAFT, etc.) regarding their applicability in private and public energy grids; developing a classification of smart contracts based on their application areas; and investigating software tools for implementing decentralized applications. Research Methods. The study employs system analysis methods to investigate microgrid architecture, comparative analysis to evaluate the efficiency of consensus algorithms, and classification methods for grouping smart contracts. For the practical part, computer modeling and experimental verification methods were used: smart contract development in Solidity, testing in the Remix IDE environment, and simulation of a local blockchain network using the Hardhat toolkit. Research results. The research systematized the methodological foundations for integrating blockchain into microgrids. It was determined that hybrid or private consensus models are most effective for energy trading within local communities. A classification of smart contracts was developed and justified, covering four levels: energy trading, monitoring, distributed management, and cybersecurity. The practical result is the implementation of the EnergyTrading smart contract, which successfully automates the process of listing offers and purchasing electricity, as confirmed by experiments in a local environment. The implementation of smart contracts allows for the creation of a reliable P2P platform for electricity trading without intermediaries, increasing economic efficiency for households. The functionality of the automated settlement mechanism was experimentally confirmed. At the same time, key challenges were identified: the limited scalability of existing blockchain solutions and the need to improve cyber defense against vulnerabilities in contract code. Further development requires adaptation of the legislative framework and modernization of the hardware components of energy grids.