Looks like a pretty efficient algo an they promise that if "this website generates interest and sells at least 20 vanity addresses, we will generate a fully-fledged automatic system to buy and manage vanity addresses."

Never thought I'd see domain squatting spread to TOR.

buying private keys for a service from someone else seems... bad for any sort-of serious use case.

> as there is no traditional DNS system available to provide easy to remember hostname addresses

I think in future reworkings of TOR a decent DNS apparatus will be one of its features. Usually 'hacks' like this are made obsolete if the hack is repeatedly used and has reached a saturation point. One example of that is how ICANN now allows for any number of novelty gTLDs and I rarely see domain hacks now because of this (Think of using .delicious instead of del.icio.us).