[tgma]

That is an iCloud lock thing that you need to worry about, but aside from antitheft issue, it’s actually quite nice to reinstall the OS on an Apple Silicon Mac because it behaves like an iOS device. You can simply use Apple Configurator or an open source tool on Linux to DFU restore the device. It’s faster than installing OS by booting into recovery mode.

[philistine]

Even easier than that; Macs now have a restore to factory settings workflow.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102664

With the way modern macOS is immutable and exactly the same on all machines thanks to signed and sealed images, no one needs to DFU to reset a Mac unless there is something very wrong.

[tgma]

Macs have had internet recovery even in Intel days (command+option+R). On Apple silicon they also have a nice erase process which quickly erases (effacable storage) as you describe but doesn’t quite as quickly install. In my experience DFU (or recovery) is faster esp if you have the macOS image pre downloaded. I usually opt for that even if not strictly necessary and firmware is not bricked.