We are told the OEM in question is not Motorola, and it's likely some benefits of the Mototola partnership aren't yet in effect due to silly bureaucracy. Not sure there is any reason to lie about this.
Embargoed ASB patches started being used in release 2025092500, but I can't find now the message where a Motorola employee (confirmed by a community moderator, spring-onion, in a Side of Burritos interview) first reached out publicly on the GrapheneOS Discord guild about how to obtain further technical guidance than the requirements list in the website which claims to be non-exhaustive, in order to confirm such message's date. Still, GrapheneOS claims (after the partnership announcement March this year) that ASB patches are provided by (effectively) a distinct undisclosed OEM, really meaning an employee is leaking them. Maybe even the person didn't disclose the OEM they work for but they must be associated to one in order to have access to this material.
Accrescent has been quiet for a while, but had claimed in the past they would open the store up for new submissions again soon, it will perhaps happen by the end of the year. Its self-imposed requirements for this are to provide a better developer experience and more common app store features developers (should) expect. They recently announced they will be posting more about the progress made towards such goal, after the big announcements and releases of some months ago.
I'm more worried about the lack of a police to take apps down when it is very clear they should not be there. This is a present problem, presently solvable and that is not acknowledged despite the fact it harms the user.
A part of the criticism of Fairphone is exactly that they aren't even particularly sustainable or repairable, or ethical, have you read the posts. So there is no choice, not between the two groups you presented as opposing. They aren't even opposing each other as currently Pixels stand as fairly easy to repair and source some genuine parts for via Google's official iFixIt partnership.
An OEM reads the link above and gets the ball rolling as it should, privately, which was what Motorola did after showing up on the public Discord guild with an employee asking for further directions, but being aware of the linked resource already. Obviously GrapheneOS' merit is provably the product and the values it represents, not posts on social media (how could that make sense?). Think of that and how this one-sided criticism of "you should do that to avoid a certain image and get things done" of yours makes no sense either - it didn't scare anyone who would ever: currently only Motorola.
Edit: adding to the last point, the same applies to Fairphone but inversely, where they portray themselves as things they are not (sustainable, specially repairable, ethical, even privacy-respecting). Whereas a takeaway from your comment is that GrapheneOS is good but has a negative image (a false premise, in my opinion), Fairphone puts a lot of *effort* to construct a good image that signals the inverse of what they are. Effort ultimately signals intention.
Embargoed ASB patches started being used in release 2025092500, but I can't find now the message where a Motorola employee (confirmed by a community moderator, spring-onion, in a Side of Burritos interview) first reached out publicly on the GrapheneOS Discord guild about how to obtain further technical guidance than the requirements list in the website which claims to be non-exhaustive, in order to confirm such message's date. Still, GrapheneOS claims (after the partnership announcement March this year) that ASB patches are provided by (effectively) a distinct undisclosed OEM, really meaning an employee is leaking them. Maybe even the person didn't disclose the OEM they work for but they must be associated to one in order to have access to this material.