Also, airdops are from tokens under Solana and not the coin itself, so it's not the one that they will be buying. Meme coins on the other hand, have no real direction, so it's kinda odd if we call them successful. Solana already proved its worth over the years, so it's definitely one of those cryptos which are a must-buy.
For the whole of 2023, SOL price hovered around $16 to $26. Everything changed when a couple of projects within its ecosystem announced airdrop and after that, there were a few meme coins that took off which caused the hype. This is not the first time they got such hype it happened before 2021 due to which in 2021 it got a new ATH. I am not against SOL but I think it is now an overhyped project and since the hype is due to the projects that are using its ecosystem that is why the price went up. Just a reminder the SOL token is the fuel that is required to use its blockchain.