ELASTIC Project - W3C/WASI Standardisation Webinar presentation

These slides were prepared for an ELASTIC internal training workshop on W3C and WASI standardisation, delivered by Dr. Merlijn Sebrechts from imec and Ghent University on 27 April 2026. The workshop aimed to help ELASTIC partners understand how to engage with WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface standardisation processes and how project results may be positioned within relevant open standards communities. The presentation explains the distinction between Core WebAssembly and WASI standardisation. Core WebAssembly standardisation focuses on features relevant to browsers, such as new instructions, memory changes, or control-flow changes. WASI standardisation, by contrast, focuses on system interfaces and the component model, including peripheral APIs, messaging APIs, and accelerator APIs for use beyond the browser. The slides also introduce the main organisations and communities involved, including the World Wide Web Consortium, the WebAssembly Community Group, the WebAssembly Working Group, and the Bytecode Alliance. They provide an overview of the phased proposal processes for both WebAssembly and WASI, including entry requirements, consensus-building, implementation expectations, and the current status of WASI phase progression. In addition, the material provides practical guidance on how to contribute to the WASI standardisation process, including how to join the WebAssembly Community Group, identify upcoming meetings, propose agenda items through GitHub pull requests, and participate in discussions. The wasi-spi proposal is presented as an example of how a WASI proposal is structured, including goals, design, WIT interface definitions, champions, and implementation repositories. These slides accompany the recording of the W3C/WASI Standardisation Webinar, which is publicly available on the ELASTIC YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/XAq_XXUUII0.