I’ve really hated the entire idea of app stores. I have been on Google Pixels since the 4, and use Calyxos, so can’t use PlayStore. Aurora comes preinstalled, but it’s kinda flakey.
F-Droid is ideal, all reproducible builds, opensource. It’s totally doable, but thinks like banking apps and utility apps, aren’t on there, as probably never will be as they all do dodgy stuff they don’t want you knowing about.
The reason I hate app stores, is because we already have a (somewhat decentralised) trusted transport in TLS/HTTPS. Like, I know if I’m on the hsbc.co.uk website, I’m 99.999999% sure I’m actually speaking to hsbc. So, then provide me the APK and let me down it. Or, make a decent PWA/WebApp so I don’t need your app.
Thing is. I don’t trust Google or Apple even a fraction as much as I would trust the TLS of the companies domain.