I am not sure exactly what this service is or why it is desirable. Pitch me in five seconds or less?

5s: save time & money

10s: vlt helps engineering teams build JavaScript software faster, reduce supply chain risk, and lower infrastructure costs (via. API perf / payload optimizations).

20s: If you've used npm for years & are just narrowly escaping the various malware attacks or are on the hook for running up CI/agent bills at work because cold installs are X percent of the time compared to your actual builds/runtime, then you should check us out.

22s: Also, <insert jFrog grumble>.

This will benefit the entire ecosystem. Well done.

So this is advertising as a secure npm?

Over a year I joined the waitlist and almost forgot that I did. Today the registry is open to deliver on its promises—secure the supply chain.

Founder here - thanks for the vote of confidence! We've got a lot more in store.

Without identity federation via oidc it’s basically not really a replacement for verdaccio

This is coming imminently but appreciate the feedback & will push to get this landed here quickly. That said, our client does support OIDC publishing if your registry does so hopefully you'll still find value there as it's a major step up from legacy npm clients.