@dalias @NebulaTide Accrescent is a project we recommend as an open source replacement for what the Play Store used to be but it's still in an early phase without a lot of apps. Makes sense to use it for the apps in it though.
It's a secure way to distribute developer builds where developers upload their releases. It's therefore not going to be a similar single point of failure, but it's also only going to exerting a small amount of influence on the app developers.