WebAssembly has a few things that set it apart: - The security model (touched on by other comments in this thread) - The Component Model. This is probably the

WebAssembly has a few things that set it apart: - The security model (touched on by other comments in this thread) - The Component Model. This is probably the hardest part to wrap your head around, but it's pretty huge. It's based on a generalization of "libraries" (which export things to be consumed) to "worlds" (which can both export and import things from a "host"). Component modules are like a rich wrapper around the simpler core modules. Having this 2-layer architecture allows far more compilers to target WebAssembly (because core modules are more general than JVM classes), while also allowing modules compiled from different ecosystems to interoperate in sophisticated ways. It's deceivingly powerful yet also sounds deceivingly unimpressive at the same time. - It's a W3C standard with a lot of browser buy-in. - Some people really like the text format, because they think it makes Wasm modules "readable". I'm not sold on that part. - Performance and the ISA design are much more advanced than JVM.