I've been doing some research into trust metrics and reputation markets. Electronic markets need a way to create trust between market participants. Of course, as John R. Allen pointed out in his keynote alt ILC05, we need to fix the way we build software first. No cryptographic algorithm will save you, if an attacker can just subvert your platform. First you have to design a trust metric, prove it's correctness, implement it, prove the correctness of the implementation and then you might be able to create reputations and maybe reputation markets. Reputations should be transferable between markets and maybe even tradeable (Charles Stross mentions reputation futures).

Links:

• Capabilities and smart contracts: E-lang
• First Monday: Trust in electronic markets
• Ludwig von Mises Institute: Can the Future Do Without Economic Logic?
• Trust Metric Wiki
• Advogato's trust metric
• Peter Thiel on Virtual Money
• The Economics of Network Industries by Oz Shy
• International Lisp 2005 Conference Keynote by John R. Allen: More Ballast
• GPG and the Web of Trust
• The Global Internet Trust Register: 1999 edition