Yes, sidechains, altchains, off chain settlement layers for small transactions.
There are many competing priorities; speed, capacity, size, security, decentralization, you enhance one at the expense of another. A changed protocol is not necessarily "improved", just optimized differently.
I came into this current debate with a fairly open mind a few weeks ago when it started looking serious and I figured I better see what all the fuss was about. I have to say, the behavior of the bigblockers has me very concerned. This is far from over, indeed I fear it is just getting started. While Segregated Witness has locked in, the 2X blocksize increase from the New York agreement is still in play, and Core has said they are not going to implement it. Thus, another fork looms. Meanwhile Ver and his cohorts wait in the wings with very deep pockets, lots of mining capacity and an army of mempool spambots so don't count Bitcoin Cash out just yet.