I really don't understand why the npm project cannot embrace PGP as an ambulatory 'good enough' solution.
Would that help? Most of these recent attacks, the attackers have gained access to the system that builds the packages. So it would have just signed the malicious build the same.
Probably the same reason that pretty much no other package manager (or even major email provider, when email is ostensibly the most famous use-case for it) has adopted it: the UX is atrocious.
The NIH mentality in the ecosystem would result in a JavaScript pgp library which itself would be an npm package and subject to supply chain attacks. lol.