Definition
Trampoline routing is a Lightning Network technique that lets a sending node delegate route calculation to a better-connected intermediary, called a trampoline node, instead of computing the entire path itself. The sender only needs to find a short route to a trampoline node and instructs it, in effect, to "deliver this payment to node X." That node then performs the heavy pathfinding and forwards the payment onward, optionally to further trampoline nodes, until it reaches the recipient.
Why it exists
Full source-routing on Lightning requires the sender to hold an up-to-date view of the network graph, which can be megabytes of channel and fee data. That is impractical for mobile wallets with limited storage, bandwidth, and battery. By outsourcing pathfinding and retry logic to a node with a complete, fresh graph, trampoline routing keeps lightweight clients viable and often completes payments faster because the trampoline node can retry failed routes without round-tripping back to the phone.
Trade-offs
The convenience comes at a privacy cost: the trampoline node learns the payment's final destination. Chaining multiple trampoline hops can blunt this, since no single node then sees both the origin and the ultimate recipient. ACINQ's Phoenix wallet is the best-known production user of trampoline routing, relying on it so the wallet itself never has to sync the full graph.
Trampoline routing is one of several approaches to delivering Lightning payments. Compare it with our entries on Multi-Path Payments (MPP) and BOLT12 (Offers).
In Simple Terms
Trampoline routing is a Lightning Network technique that lets a sending node delegate route calculation to a better-connected intermediary, called a trampoline node, instead of…