Electric Vehicles (EVs), as well as the number of applications for their management, are rapidly increasing due to the fact that Internet of Vehicles (IoV) becomes more informative and industrialized. According to the literature, IoV requires decentralization towards the energy Demand Response (DR) management, with secure energy trading, efficient charging scheduling, and incentives for making the drivers to participate. Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) can be used to enable a foundational environment to support DR management. However, and to the best of our knowledge, none of the existing research works discussed in the literature adopts a holistic approach to address them. As such there is a demand for exploring a unified blockchain-based framework for distributed DR management. Therefore, the aim of this work is focused on the blockchain adoption in IoV-assisted smart cities. More specifically, we propose a blockchain based approach, to be used for building a secure and user-centric DR management framework. Our proposition aims to address the DRP in IoV through charging scheduling based on the generation of EV driving profiles, and optimal Vehicle-to-Vehicle/Grid (V2V | V2G) energy trading.