We evaluated several frameworks and liked the model that Actix has and also its relative maturity (for example documentation / examples). It has been pretty straightforward to work with - including doing things like custom authentication and REST endpoints that dynamically exist.
For the drama, I guess you are talking about the situation that used to exist where Actix had hundreds of unsafe blocks. That's pretty much resolved now, with perhaps a handful of performance critical unsafe blocks left.
I'm not passing any judgements, I just know that people were somewhat worried about the future of the project after its creator very publicly washed their hands of it. Sounds like it's still going, which is good to hear
Then they really should think about changing their name, seeing as actix the broader low-level framework is supposed to be all about Actors.