Pony has a concept of Object Capabilities[1]. Basically it lets you whitelist capabilities like network access or more granular access like specific protocol access. In the docs it states "If the library is asking for more authority than it needs, do not use the library."

This doesn't solve the problem of people pulling in huge dependencies that they can't reasonably scan, or so many dependencies that they can't scan, but surely it's a step in the right direction.

[1]: https://tutorial.ponylang.io/object-capabilities/object-capa...