Any update on this, is it still happening?

How about btcsolver.com

Sounds cool to me, I'll buy a few shares once this gets listed.

Sure, something like this might be possible if you can find a VPN or proxy that isn't blocked by freenode. But I'm not really looking for a workaround for myself, I'm more interested to see what can be done to fix this for other people in the future.

I think using GPG authentication and the Web of Trust anonymously is something traders may reasonably want to do, and at the moment it's not really possible.

Some possible ideas:

• Move the trading channels off freenode to some other irc server in the future (irc.bitcoin.org?)
  
• Provide a web interface to gribble somehow.
• Someone provides a web interface for creating accounts on freenode.

Right, this is a workaround for the problem but I'd like to think that a better long term solution could be found.

No, there is no way to connect to freenode through i2p. The i2p IRC server just has someone on it (nanotube I believe) running gribble connecting the #bitcoin channels on both networks.

My understanding is that currently the only way to do GPG authentication and use the web of trust is to be in the #bitcoin-otc channel on freenode.

Tor access to freenode is restricted to SASL connections, which require a freenode account which in turn requires a freenode connection to create, breaking anonymity (at least for the initial account creation).

#bitcoin on i2p is linked to the #bitcoin freenode channel but not #bitcoin-otc and it's not possible to authenticate with gribble using this.

I'm interested in any suggestions on what can be done to improve the situation?