This, in turn, alleviates the pressure to reduce emissions and decreases the incentive for companies to invest in cleaner technologies. Security and legal aspects are increasingly significant given the instances of theft of certificates, fraudulent carbon trading, tax fraud and tax evasion within the EU ETS. Central authorities can create bottlenecks that could be avoided by implementing decentralised systems. For example, the international transaction log (ITL) connects registries involved in the emissions trading mechanism and validates all transactions before final processing by the national registries (UNFCCC, 2018). The EU ETS has undergone reforms to address structural problems (e.g. market stability reserve - MSR), resulting in rising emissions quota prices, but proper further impacts of reform are still to be seen post 2020.