Find popular-but-abandoned Chrome extensions (broken by Manifest V3 or developer exit), rebuild them, and monetize the orphaned user base.
“Market-tested” means a real shipped product or experiment measured the failure directly (a live user count, a dead auction, a documented shutdown). “Predicted” means the verdict is an evidence-based forecast from the receipts below, not a direct measurement.
Real orphaned demand exists — MV3 deprecation broke or stranded many well-loved extensions with six-figure user counts, and users post looking for replacements. The strategy has also been publicized (an Indie Hackers post in June 2026 drew visible copycats), which matters: the meta-strategy itself now has a rush.
Four compounding failures. (1) Free refill outruns you: every abandoned-popular-extension void examined was refilled within months by free or FOSS replacements (cookie managers, tab managers, dark-mode, form-recovery — all had free successors before a paid revival could establish itself). (2) Monetization infrastructure is anti-passive: Chrome Web Store payments shut down in 2021, so you self-run Stripe/ExtensionPay billing, support, and refunds per extension. (3) Where indie extension revenue provably concentrates is platform-ToS-violating automation (LinkedIn, Poshmark, Gmail mass-actions) — off-limits if you build clean. (4) Ongoing MV3/review-policy churn means every revived extension is a maintenance liability that can be delisted or broken by policy at any time. The revival playbook is now also publicly crowded, so even the discovery edge is gone.
Chrome shipping native extension payments again AND evidence that FOSS refill speed has slowed in a specific niche. Check the niche's void: if a popular extension died more than ~3 months ago and no free replacement has appeared, that single case may merit a look — the class as a whole does not.
We build data tools on the shelves that aren't dead — see the tools hub →