Fastify is a similar project that aims to be faster than Express and adds a number of API improvements like baked-in schema validation for routes, logging, and async-by-default APIs.

Haven't used it in production but replaced Express with it in some side projects.

Since server.js is built on top of express it might even be possible to build a variant of it on Fastify instead and get those benefits as well.

https://www.fastify.io/