Anyone can host their own fdroid repo.
In fact, the most popular one is not even the official one.
Discussion
izzyondroid?
Yet another middleman
Every curated list is a middleman.
The alternative is expecting average users to trust or audir possibly 100 different devs from each different used app, any of who can publish a malicious update.
Every solution has tradeoffs, there isn't a 1 size fits all.