Overall GrapheneOS has a very well reputation. It’s Open Source, tried and tested. Snowden uses / used it in the past. Google back ported numerous security fixes/improvements into the main OS over the years and that is telling a lot about graphenes quality of work.

The other devs seem calm, at least you don’t hear stuff from them like you did from the ex lead. So besides the issues with their publicity in the past I don’t worry about them stopping or discontiueing the project.

So I say, go for it. Try it out even if you install their containerised google play service implementation to get access to banking apps and reliable (non battery) draining notifications.