Kind VS wat-js

Depending on what you mean by practical it already is! https://github.com/HigherOrderCO/Kind HVM was developed to be an efficient backend for the Kind language from the same folks

One thing that you can use right now is Kind, a functional language and proof assistant.

Hey, that's pretty cool! The lang that targets this runtime is https://github.com/HigherOrderCO/Kind

Well Forth is possibly the most minimal VM over a platform, as evidenced by openfirmware.

It does have problems scaling though, in that if you've seen one Forth, you've seen one Forth ie. The variations required to fit a platform make them semi-incompatible.

That's not to say that a more lispy Forth wouldn't be useful though, in that a concatenative syntax allows us to pass custom datastructures around like APL, and CPS (delimited continuations with lexically scoped dynamic binding would come from the lisp side (see https://github.com/manuel/wat-js).

Memory management in Forth can handle multiple memory types eg. https://flashforth.com/ so adding something like ref counting (https://github.com/zigalenarcic/minilisp/blob/main/main.c) to handle the dynamic list side of things might mesh well.

In any case, if you're looking for a self hosting lisp that runs on bare metal, https://github.com/attila-lendvai/maru has been out for a few years.

https://github.com/manuel/wat-js

If you have delimited continuations then you can construct coroutines/threads/await/async, promises etc.

I guess that this might be suitable for many scenarios thanks to nodejs, but the runtimes it relies on are not exactly small.