One evolution of (You're probably aware of re:axisofeval) Kernel is Wat (https://github.com/manuel/wat-js), which implements the Vau operator (hygenic F-exprs), full delimited continuations (as opposed to the usual Shift/reset functionality of most lisp-based langs) and dynamic variables (variables which can break out of the usual lexical ie. compile-time scope and take environmental ie. runtime values).

It's quite fast with all of that. The continuations allow you to define promises, threads, channels, exceptions, branching and so on. Thing is, syntatically the continuations are required to carry quite a lot. Algebraic effects layered on top would have a nicer syntax.

Similarly, I would suggest that dynamic variables and continuations are more understandable in a forth-like language where the return and data stacks are first class. What's more, forth-like languages use a concatenative (streaming) syntax which allows streams to be more first class. Forsp (https://xorvoid.com/forsp.html) is such a language, that supports both lisp-like, and forth-like semantics

Furthermore, forth-like languages give you explicit parsing to be able to handle quasiquote and special chars etc. This parsing can be layered, you can have a low-level parser along the lines of able-forth (https://github.com/ablevm/able-forth), and a higher-level (word/function level rather than char level) parser like rebol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebol) /ometa (https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3930).

There's a lot more to say about GC, compilation steps, DSL towers, formal verification, meta-compilation and so on, suffice to recommend checking out the afore mentioned languages!