We've been using Actix.

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.