Ok, onion padding I'm assuming you're talking about BOLT12? I'll take your word for it. That's cool I didn't know that. Thanks for clarification.

Even if you aren't a routing node, how does the first node in a payment route not know your IP by default? I don't see how that is possible.

Yea, Dandelion doesn't encrypt traffic (didn't claim it did). You just can't be sure the transaction you are receiving originated from someone or if they were just another hop.
It's not perfect (neither is Tor), but Dandelion AND Tor is strictly better than just Tor.

Ok cool, looking forward to listening when it drops, thanks