did you ever send Bitcoins through the Lightning network

yes i did. It actually pretty good and you can send $1 with 90% guarantee. Not the best but it been artificially limted until watchtowers come which is coming near the end of Oct. The LN is more reliable and will be bc there no such thing as mempool. Onchain tx might be higher again but Liquid will be coming it a exchange alliance think of it as instasend on bitcoin. All exchange to exchange traffic will be on Liquid and due to alot of tx on bitcoin are to exchanges -the mempool would be more empty.
And hopefully schorr will be coded by then which gives 40% more scale with no big blocks with a softfork.
I do think 2018 bear market has let Bitcoin catch up to altcoins and is more ready to battle them.