I've spent a couple months trying to come up with ways to protect bitcoin consumers, and the only thing I can think of is for exchanges to purchase some kind of high-risk insurance which will cover losses by the exchange. Nothing else will protect users, as far as I can tell, precisely because of bitcoin's irreversible transactions.

Honestly, the best thing for the bitcoin ecosystem is to learn from Paypal and Visa, and to emulate their good qualities. I know it's popular to hate on the existing ways of doing things, but the existing ways have a lot of hidden wisdom embedded in them.