If Clojure offered a direct compile-to-native option for any platform (desktop/mobile/WASM) with no JVM in between, I suspect it would explode in popularity.

What advantages do you feel WebAssemlby would have vs the current JS as a compile target?

Size and Performance for large web-apps presumably. For example, Figma which is currently wiping Sketch's face on the floor is written in C++ and compiled to WASM. https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/made-with-web...

Wasm was designed for C/C++ and pretty hostile toward dynamic GC languages. Clojure is very different from C++ and can leverage JSVM GC and dynamic dispatch system, which are a lot of code and highly optimized.

Even disregarding the perf problems the scale of implementation effort and resulting wasm code size would be prohibitive. Not to mention losing easy low friction interop with JS ecosystem libraries.

It's only a matter of time before we have WASM ecosystem libraries - modules that can be loaded like JS modules. https://webassembly.org/roadmap/

Moreover an immutable language like Clojure doesn't necessarily need an GC - one could probably leverage ARC to great effect.

I don't think JS will rule the roost a decade from now. It's simply too slow and most folks actively dislike the ecosystem of NPM hell.