I don't feel like this is responsive to what I said when taken as a whole. I obviously wasn't just advocating for something because it's faster.

...but, if your goal is really verifiable state, why don't you just use image mode linux with bootc, since it provides much of what you're looking for, except to a higher level. All your arguments for NixOS so far apply to that as well, but there's even more immutability and verifiability.