Lightning is a routing payments network so it requires everyone to be online 24/7 and a huge amount of liquidity is required to balance channels which makes it very difficult to have a good UX. As well as paying L1 fees to open/close channels. So I find it very complex and difficult network to use for the layman bitcoiner.
Saying that Custodial Lightning Wallets have great UX and work well in 99% of cases. The issue with Custodial Lightning wallets is that you have to trust middle men with your funds like how you trust your fiat in a bank account so you dont truly own your funds.
I believe the best way to scale bitcoin is via sidechains. Advantages include: No liquidity constraints as 1 pegged BTC always equals 1 BTC. You can have a chain used purely for private traceless transactions. You can have instant payments. You can have self-custodial wallets. All the sidechains would be interopable with each other via atomic swaps and payment channels. So thats why I am big fan of BIP300 proposal (drivechain.xyz).
But theres definitely of cool ideas for scaling like Ark, BitVM, Surfchains and State chains. Alternative Bitcoin scaling solutions to Lightning⚡️:
-Fedimint (http://fedimint.org)
-Federated sidechains Rootstock (http://rootstock.io) and Liquid (http://liquid.net)
-Spiderchain (http://botanixlabs.xyz)
-RGB (http://rgb.tech)
-Enigma Network (https://blog.bitfinex.com/education/what-is-the-enigma-network/)
-Validity rollups (http://Bitcoinrollups.org)
-Ark (http://arkpill.me)
-Mercury Layer (http://mercurywallet.com)
-BitVM (http://bitVM.org)
-Drivechain (http://drivechain.xyz)
DYOR