WebAssembly (Wasm) is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. It is designed as a portable compilation target for programming languages, enabling deployment on the web for client-side scripting or on servers for cloud computing. WebAssembly’s primary value proposition lies in its near-native performance, security, and cross-platform compatibility, allowing developers to build high-performance applications that can run in a variety of environments.
Main use cases include accelerating web applications by running computationally intensive tasks client-side, enabling serverless functions with fast startup times, building blockchain applications with secure and sandboxed execution environments, creating cross-platform games, and embedding WebAssembly runtimes in other applications for extensibility and sandboxed execution.