What is the actual state of Tornado Cash?

I'm conducting university research on Tornado Cash and would like to gather insights from knowledgeable individuals. Below are some key questions I have:

1) Malicious Governance Proposal & Frontend Concerns

I read that a malicious governance proposal compromised the Tornado Cash DAO, and according to this GitHub repository, I should not use tornadoeth.cash. Instead, it's recommended to use the IPFS-hosted frontend: IPFS Official Frontend. However, these links seem to be down, meaning the only options left are deploying the frontend locally or using tornado-cli or other local methods

My questions are:

• How does tornadoeth.cash have malicious governance while the IPFS frontend does not?
• Isn’t the smart contract address the same regardless of the frontend?
• Why tornadoeth.cash is malicious while IPFS frontend not?

2) Tornado Cash Nova – Why Should It Be Avoided?

The previous GitHub page also states that Tornado Cash Nova should not be used. Why is that?

• Is it also compromised?
• What are the risks associated with using Nova?

3) Censorship & Transaction Blocking

• What is the current state of censorship regarding Tornado Cash?
• Are funds sent through Tornado Cash being blocked by protocols and exchanges?
• Do users bypass this censorship by bridging to other chains (e.g., Monero, Solana)?
• If everything is logged on the blockchain, how does a bridge like Wormhole (for example to pass from ETH to SOL) effectively hide transaction traces?
• RPC provider – I heard that some block transactions to Tornado Cash. Does this still happen?

4) Legal Status – Is Tornado Cash Legal Now?

I read that on November 26, 2024, a U.S. court revoked the sanctions on Tornado Cash.

• Does this mean it is now legal in the U.S.? If it is legal, then why the censorships/blocks listed above?
• Are there still restrictions in other jurisdictions?

5) Current Status of the Tornado Cash Project

• Why is the official Twitter/X account inactive?
• The official (you can find it here) only has ~4k members – is it still legitimate?
• Is the community still active, or has the project lost momentum?
• Are there alternative forums or developer groups keeping the project alive? Are there any new forks or alternatives that the community trusts?