[nullc]

Yes, and lightning does the same. The other bitcoin nodes that route your messages are not a trusted third party, no more than the bitcoin nodes that relay your transaction when you transmit it any time you use Bitcoin.

Wrights comments on topology are technobabble and largely meaningless, so it's difficult to say something about them... however, to the extent that we can assign any meaning at all to them don't you notice that saying your transactions need to go through particular nodes sounds an awful lot like the property you're using to argue that lightning is not peer to peer?

[phillipsjk]

Unlike the base layer, the LN uses source routing: which was abandoned years ago. Requiring the endpoints to know the structure of the network graph leads to intractable routing problems at scale.

[nullc]

Many source routed networks work fine, including Tor. All MPLS usage is source routed. Source routing isn't used for _IP_ (generally) but for reasons which have nothing to do with 'scale'.

[etherael]

Not a problem if you don't intend to have nodes sufficient to actually be considered "at scale" and your plan from the very beginning is a centralised hub and spoke network.