If you use Cloudflare for your DNS (which is free) they will allow cnames for the base domain, and when someone requests your domain Cloudflare will just query for the result of the cname themselves and return the IP as though you put in an A record. You can additionally choose to proxy your site behind Cloudflare's servers, but you don't have to.

And yes, it is frustrating for chrome to make this change, but it's also really uncommon and not very efficient to have your base domain go nowhere.