I feel like it's more about having a blockchain that people uses. If they are used for a good thing that would be lovely, BUT if they are used for something shitty that's still being used and I think that would be fine. As long as people end up with anything they can deal with, like if the volume is high, then buyers will be there and if buyers are there, even for a wrong reason, then we are going to end up with something much better in the end.
I feel like the best thing to do would be just accept the fact that some of the people in the crypto world just work on hype and trend wave, which is not ideal of course but it does make things go up. Solana is one of those coins, and I think it will go up for wrong reasons but it will still go up.
If there's money flowing on the market, Solana won't be going anywhere soon. Even if it's solely used for worthless "meme" coins. It's all about demand. If a coin has demand, it will remain popular no matter what. The past network outages didn't affect SOL's position on the market. Especially when whales are the ones keeping it afloat.
I'm yet to see if the upcoming Firedancer node client will improve the reliability of the network. It could be nothing more than hype. The crypto market behaves in many strange and bizarre ways, so expect the unexpected.