<p>Onion routing is only taking place while transporting payments, so it is incentivized by the routing fees. AFAICT all remaining communication is gossiping, which is necessary for all clients to stay up to date with the changing state of the network. So receiving this is in the interest of every node. Now one might think about withholding attacks where a node doesn’t forward info. I’m not sure if there have been any measures implemented to protect against that, but I also don’t believe there is much to gain from such behavior, since this communication isn’t costly and the information would simply be routed around the attacker. It might become a problem if many nodes do it, though. Not sure if anybody has looked into this possibility.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-10-17T15:18:56.107Z
I'm talking about this onion messaging: https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blame/247e83d528a2a380e533e89f31918d7b0ce6a0c1/04-onion-routing.md#L1453-L1628 . It's a new (~1.5 years) concept that doesn't involve transporting payments.
user1748155
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-10-01T05:33:11.570Z
2024-10-01T05:33:11.570Z
stefanwouldgo
<p><a href="https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/04-onion-routing.md" rel="nofollow noreferrer">BOLT4</a> defines onion routing for <strong>messages</strong> <em>and</em> <strong>payments</strong> in the lightning network. This is really cool. However, I'm wondering how <strong>message</strong> routing is incentivized? <strong>Payment</strong> routing seems to be clearly incentivized as each node hop gets to collect a fee, I just don't understand how the <strong>messages</strong> are incentivized.</p>
<p>It seems like onion messaging is starting to be used for more and more things. <a href="https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/12-offer-encoding.md" rel="nofollow noreferrer">BOLT12</a> uses it to exchange <code>invoice_requests</code> and <code>invoices</code>. <a href="https://github.com/lightning/blips/blob/master/blip-0032.md" rel="nofollow noreferrer">bLIP32</a> proposes doing DNS over onion messaging. As usage of onion messaging continues to grow, at what point will the current model for forwarding onion messages get abused and fail to scale and no longer work reliably? The TOR network seems to suffer this problem, it is a free service and there is no incentive for running a node, so it is very slow and unreliable because many people try to use it.</p>

<lightning-network><onion-message>
how is onion messaging on the lightning network incentivized?
user1748155
# how is onion messaging on the lightning network incentivized?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-09-30)

[BOLT4](https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/04-onion-routing.md) defines onion routing for **messages** *and* **payments** in the lightning network. This is really cool. However, I'm wondering how **message** routing is incentivized? **Payment** routing seems to be clearly incentivized as each node hop gets to collect a fee, I just don't understand how the **messages** are incentivized.

It seems like onion messaging is starting to be used for more and more things. [BOLT12](https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/12-offer-encoding.md) uses it to exchange `invoice_requests` and `invoices`. [bLIP32](https://github.com/lightning/blips/blob/master/blip-0032.md) proposes doing DNS over onion messaging. As usage of onion messaging continues to grow, at what point will the current model for forwarding onion messages get abused and fail to scale and no longer work reliably? The TOR network seems to suffer this problem, it is a free service and there is no incentive for running a node, so it is very slow and unreliable because many people try to use it.

**Tags:** lightning-network, onion-message


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2024-10-01. Score: 0

Onion routing is only taking place while transporting payments, so it is incentivized by the routing fees. AFAICT all remaining communication is gossiping, which is necessary for all clients to stay up to date with the changing state of the network. So receiving this is in the interest of every node. Now one might think about withholding attacks where a node doesn’t forward info. I’m not sure if there have been any measures implemented to protect against that, but I also don’t believe there is much to gain from such behavior, since this communication isn’t costly and the information would simply be routed around the attacker. It might become a problem if many nodes do it, though. Not sure if anybody has looked into this possibility.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I'm talking about this onion messaging: https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blame/247e83d528a2a380e533e89f31918d7b0ce6a0c1/04-onion-routing.md#L1453-L1628 . It's a new (~1.5 years) concept that doesn't involve transporting payments.  

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