Re: The Barry Silbert segwit2x agreement with >80% miner support.
I don't know if Lightning Network is the only way, but it seems like a pretty decent way to move a large number of transactions off the chain and to free the chain up for some of the rest of us... and furthermore, from my understanding, those supposedly off chain transactions are not completely off of the chain, because they are still linked to the chain and need to be resolved on a periodically acceptable basis...
Those are called "sidechains", of which LN is not. Don't feel bad, though, you're not alone in the misconception that LN and sidechains are the same thing, it seems to be an epidemic. 