Current situ from my perspective, and a rough run-down of previous events:

Server previously fell behind, emperor and I had discussions, tried contacting Tom, and discussed the new path with a collection of users off site.

At the 11.5th hour, Tom did the upgrade, and made myself and Emperor front-end Administrators. There was also discussion over us having back-end access, and the domain being transferred.

Because of the development, we put the new site on the back burner.

As far as I recall, we haven't had any comms with Tom since.

The site is now versions behind again.

Over Xmas, when the feddit.uk went down, I stood up a new instance. However, Emperor is also not responding, and I am hoping to hear from him soon.

As we had planned to share the responsibility of the site, the new domain is offline until I hear from Emperor.

As I've mentioned a few times, the technical side of things is ready.
It's the grown-up and legal admin that needs a rock solid footing before launch. And having that stuff is going to be the key to launching the site in a stable way.