The step in [a] direction was done a few months ago with Segwit and enabling LN.
Neither of which do anything to further the goal of onboarding the world. Whether or not we have Segwit or Lightning, 1MB blocks will require 30 years to get a single transaction to each person on earth. The
only way to improve this is with larger blocks.
This is one blockchain, not the bloody Noah's ark. The limits of on-chain scalability are evident even to the likes of me...