Has it been abandoned or is it just done? It's still sitting at 29 million downloads a week, so while it doesn't get frequent updates I wouldn't call it abandoned unless there are major security flaws that are being left unaddressed.
Not every package needs to have multiple updates in a year.
Who knows. They were working on http2 6-7 years ago and it hasn't arrived. I was under the impression the primary dev stopped working on it and some people were able to get maintainer access for security updates but that's about it. Maybe some people re-started development but not sure and Fastify has an express compatibility layer so it's not compelling to me.
2023 I'm only thinking about express if a legacy app using it falls in my lap.
Not every package needs to have multiple updates in a year.