With an estimated limit of 500 transactions per second (TPS) per payment channel (under current network conditions), Lightning has a throughput of more than 40 million TPS, the equivalent of 14.4 TB size blocks. This is more than 1000x the capacity of VISA, which can only handle upwards of 150 million TPS a day or a maximum of 24,000 TPS at once.
As a sidechain, bitcoin on the Liquid Network is verifiably backed 1:1 by bitcoin on the mainchain. Once a user has transferred bitcoin to Liquid, they can take advantage of the network's augmented features.
Lightning and Liquid are mirroring Bitcoin in their rate of adoption. At the time of publication, the number of payment channels on the Lightning Network has almost tripled year-over-year to just over 87,000 active channels.
There are two major overhauls on the horizon: BOLT12, a new Lightning specification that introduces offers to allow more functionality and privacy, and the Dynamic Federations (DynaFed) deployment that enables the Liquid Federation to add functionaries for greater resiliency and decentralization.
With these crucial upgrades to Bitcoin's payment and financial layers around the corner, Bitcoin is well-positioned for the next leg of mainstream adoption.