I’d say the ability to compile other code to it by using it as an LLVM backend. Also, designs like V8 isolates seem to be much lighter weight to spin up than the designs Amazon Lambdas use. Cloudflare has some blog posts on this. I’ve been fiddling with it currently, mostly at the level of its of text assembly format (WAT). The still in progress WASI spec gives OS access like file systems for server use.

In short, if the JVM works for you in an enterprise type role, I’d see little reason to switch now to WebAssembly. But it’s future path as a possible mainstream compile target and functions-as-a-service type platform are interesting.

Currently performance gains in the browser vs JS appear minimal- mostly I’m guessing because V8 et al are so damn good at runtime optimization.

The fact that WebAssembly seems to have fallen off of the hype train means that it may have a shot at being the future of serverless.

edit: I’d add that its origins in the browser leave it with a “download and stream code to compiler” that strengthen its serverless scenario visbility.

Some WASM interpreter can run on MCU.

https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime