You're approaching this from the wrong angle it's not the technology in the router average people are buying. They care about ease of use, reliability, and features. In that order. Dropbox won because it provided rsync in an easy to understand product. If ddwrt allows you to build features into routers that have good UX for average people then you win. What would those features be? That's the work you should be doing

Off the top of my head. A mobile app for setting up and remotely monitoring and controlling my home network. Pihole/pivpn built in with wireguard and a good UX for creating tunnels. Host isolation. A local llm that I can ask questions and get fixed (why can't I print to the printer from my laptop on ssid1. Fix it). Kid friendly things for parents. Easy kid schedules and device groups to limit screen time and reports on what sites they visited.

Ubiquitis amplifi app had a decent mobile app with some of these things.

Go after the product not the technology.