Figma — Notes

Functional

• Real-time multiplayer canvas.
• Cursors, comments, history.
• Components / styles / libraries.
• Prototyping + Dev mode.
• Plugins.

Non-functional

• Op echo < 200 ms locally.
• Tens of editors per file.
• 99.95% uptime.

Trade-offs

• Single owner per file simplifies; needs migration on failover.
• Custom CRDT because graphics tree has parent/child + property merge semantics.
• WebGL client offloads rendering; server is purely state engine.

Refs

• Figma engineering blog ("How Figma's multiplayer technology works").
• Yjs design comparisons.
• ByteByteGo "Design Figma".