I don't think NPM has proven that idea infeasible, just that it may not be a good idea to depend on third-party content that may change under your feet, on such a fine-grained level.

But have a look at the Unison language https://www.unison-lang.org/docs/the-big-idea/ , that has such global registry but addresses each function by a hash of its syntax tree, and thus sidesteps the issue.