You shouldn't worry too much about not picking the library/framework that ends up being the most popular: as long as the project fits your needs and doesn't die

You shouldn't worry too much about not picking the library/framework that ends up being the most popular: as long as the project fits your needs and doesn't die, you're good. For instance, Actix remains a solid choice, and given it survived having two changes in leadership, it has actually proved pretty robust. Conversely, even the most popular framework could disappear if the maintener gives up and nobody can/want to take over. So the best thing you can do is making sure the maintainer doesn't burns out and give up. As a company that includes giving them dedicated help for triaging bugs or reviewing PRs (it doesn't need to be a full time job, but assign one member of your team a fraction of their work time to this task) or sponsoring them if you have some money to spare but only if they are looking for sponsorship to have more time working on the project (but not otherwise, because that's a recipe to make them burn out).