Great analysis. I'm Syrus, from Wasmer, and I've been working on WebAssembly professionally for the last 7 years (we are, in fact, the first Wasm-first company!)... hopefully my point of view would be useful to read!

Why things are not as heated? Simply, because many of the big players are no longer doing the big bets on the technology, nor they are spending any marketing on making it successful. Mainly because most of their bets have been unsuccessful: WASI, Component Model. Many of the small players that raised money on the space either died or ended being acqui-hired by bigger players. The only ones that survive is the ones that truly understand is that tech doesn't matter a thing, is the product (what are you enabling with WebAssembly).

In my view, this happens because there's a great mismatch between technical capabilities and the go-to-market skills that bringing the tech to the masses requires.

The developers that tend to be technically great and understand the value of WebAssembly, are usually not as good on Go To Market to make it successful. For example, WASI proponents wanted to completely break the POSIX model (because in their view, is completely wrong... and they are partially right!). But they don't only want Wasm to succeed... they also want their mental model of new Operating System calls to go along with it (thus, you tie the success of one, to the success of another).

AI only amplifies the Go To Market skills even further, by accelerating tech even more. When your MOAT is fully built around the tech but there's nothing that sustains it (a product), then you have an issue. The market is what sustains it, nothing else. People in the ecosystem cared way more about politics (creating a working group to control other companies), than they cared about creating something that many people could use tomorrow.

At Wasmer, it took us a bit of time to understand this, but overtime we have been able to improve our skills to continuing capturing value from it.

So, it's possible to create something successful with WebAssembly. You just need to make something people want (tl;dr: is not the tech!)