Yes, it is a VM, but not "VM as in JVM or .NET". "VM" in Bob Nystrom's article is used as a later sense. Hence the article mostly does not apply to WebAssembly.

Yes, it is a VM, but not "VM as in JVM or .NET". "VM" in Bob Nystrom's article is used as a later sense. Hence the article mostly does not apply to WebAssembly. On the topic of JIT, the whole point of WebAssembly (and asm.js) is that it is so simple that you don't need JIT to execute it. You can AOT it fine.