At its core, WebAssembly is a virtual instruction set architecture that enables high-performance applications on the Web, and can be employed in many other environments. There are multiple implementations of WebAssembly, including browsers and stand-alone systems. WebAssembly can be used for applications like video and audio codecs, graphics and 3D, multi-media and games, cryptographic computations or portable language implementations.

I'm pretty excited about WebAssembly in the browser, and outside of it as well. Being able to compile from any number of languages into a bytecode format that can be executed alongside JavaScript in the browser is cool. But I'm interested in how it could be used to extend desktop applications as well.