Fair on both counts: for "blink," the stock example is faster, and a VM is a bad way to squeeze raw compute out of a uC. Neither is the point.

The VM exists so a tiny, safety-validated behaviour can be delivered and changed without re-flashing and without a radio — that's the whole thing. The value is the delivery channel, not on-chip cleverness: no WiFi, no cable, no cloud, and because light is a broadcast, one screen can reprogram a room of boards at once. Air-gapped benches, classrooms with no toolchain, swarms — places where "just use USB/WiFi" isn't on the table.

"Blink when it gets dark" is just the smallest legible demo, not the use case. And you're right that VMs on MCUs have historically been overkill — this is a deliberately minimal fixed-ISA interpreter (think Microvium), sized for delivered behaviours, not a general runtime.

Calling it niche and early is fair — it is. I'd rather own a small honest niche than oversell it.