Now here's a cool idea: BuySafe is a firm that's selling insurance for online auctions. The seller pays 1% of the winning bid - letting him send a strong signal of his quality. Good idea - If they can block people from gaming the system.
Why? The Net is like a massive infrastructure for adverse selection, because all the so-called reputation systems, like TrustE, failed miserably. Why? Because none of them were credible - they all lost consumer trust themselves with shady tactics.
In terms of contract analysis, insurance is just another mechanism to eliminate information asymmetries and align incentives between buyers and sellers - pushing the lemons out of the market, and letting consumers trust sellers.
It's a much better mechanism than contract mediation services, because on the Net, the asymmetrical information is balanced towards the seller - it's the buyer that needs some kind of quality signal.