[miohtama]

I feel the JVM bytecode was not universal compile target where WebAssembly is. JVM target was hand-in-hand with Java the language, both owned by Sun, later litigation happy Oracle. Java was a political problem, plus also a security problem due to its various exploits. Thus, I feel it is incorrect to say Java the compile target solved anything (thought the language found a niche use case at server software later).

Some use case outside browsers are edge computing and distributing binaries (for computation efficiency) with NPM packages. For example, distributing cryptographic libraries as Wasm instead of error prone reimplementation in JS.