>An adblocker, by its nature, needs to access *

Well that's what is in contention. Does everything claiming to be an adblocker really need access to *? Is Adblocker5++ (totally not malware) entitled to as much access as uBlock Origin? You can declare upfront all the URLs you don't want accessed (which on top of security gives a substantial performance boost), and who's to say someone won't figure out a better way of working within these constraints?