I think Figma being a browser web app is one of the core reasons why it’s outpacing alternatives both in terms of features and UX. It’s a remarkable feat.

https://penpot.app/about.html is an open source competitor to figma. I'm not a designer so I cannot speak to how good it is.

It was built to scratch the itch of the company Kaleidos.

Yes. I found it weird too. They put so much effort into making their app performant and then for the desktop app, wrapped it into an electron shell which is weird :)

I guess except the designing canvas, all the UI controls are built over DOM/Javascript and they needed a quick way to take them all into desktop. But I did expect more from Figma :)

Having access to the chrome dev tools during designing is very useful!