We outline a lightweight architecture to support novel application scenarios for P2P systems. These scenarios include merging and splitting of large networks, or multiplexing relatively short-lived applications over a pool of shared resources. In such scenarios, the architecture needs to be quickly and efficiently (re)generated frequently, often from scratch. We propose the bootstrapping service abstraction as a solution to this problem. We present an instance of the service that can jumpstart any prefix-table based routing substrate quickly, cheaply and reliably from scratch. We experimentally analyze the proposed bootstrapping service, demonstrating its scalability and robustness.