[DanielHB]

Technically you don't need a full kernel, edge workers will likely have their own custom trimmed down kernels for running WASM binaries, cutting out a lot of the OS overhead. As long as they implement a limited set of POSIX syscalls they can run WASM binaries, in fact you might even want to limit the WASI syscalls you implement for certain targets.

There are also other things of great value, for example providing a way to write plugins for cloud-based SaaS solutions, as in you compile your binary, hand it over to your SaaS service and the service itself runs your binary when some event happens. Basically plugins for cloud based stuff, much more powerful and simpler than Web Hooks.

Another example was to write custom database functions, for example, adding a complex math function to postgres so you can do "SELECT myFunc(COLUMN_A, COLUMN_B) FROM TABLE".

Another example was to sandbox plugins for desktop applications (including mods for video games), plugins are a huge security issue when it is native code running in your machine.

These plugin examples the entity that is running the plugin code can limit the syscalls used by your WASI-compatible WASM binary so you don't allow, for example, your video game mod to read/write files outside a specific folder in the file-system