I use .dev as well for everything.

And as WordPress work makes up a big portion of my paycheck I understand the serialization but haven't worried about it since moving to WP CLI everywhere and adding it to project scripts/automation.

  wp search-replace 'someproject.dev' 'someproject.dev'

It'll handle serialization and you can even use it for quick import/export:

  wp export --add-drop-table db.sql

  wp import db.sql