I stopped using npm a while back and push and pull tar files instead.
Naturally I get js modules from npm in the first place, but I never run code with it after initial install and testing of a library for my own use.
The de facto compromise is to use package.json for deps, but your distributable blob is a docker image, which serializes a concrete node_modules. Something similar (and perhaps more elegant) is Java's "fat jar" approach where all dependencies are put into a single jar file (and a jar file is just a renamed zip so it's much like a tarball).
If you vendor and tar your dependencies correctly you could functionally build a system around trust layers by inspecting hashes before allowing unpacking for instance.
It’s a thought exercise certainly but there might be legs to this idea