How Figma’s multiplayer technology works (2019)
40 comments
·August 16, 2025thruflo
Just to say if you're interested in this kind of tech and are in the Bay Area, Sync Conf [0] just announced [1] its initial speaker lineup today and Arushi Bandi from Figma is one of the speakers.
[0]: https://syncconf.dev [1]: https://x.com/sync_conf/status/1957818840777122293
freeqaz
This is still a hard problem today. Some hard tech was built for this. I'm excited for a world where this is more accessible and less hardcore than something like CRDTs (in terms of accessibility).
How have others noticed the world shifting in the past 6 years?
danielvaughn
There are now a few sync engines that tackle this problem. Rocicorp Zero, Electric SQL, and one or two others. By no means a crowded space, but there are options now.
edit: links
https://zero.rocicorp.dev/
https://electric-sql.com/winrid
Sharedb/racer solved this like 10yrs ago. You get synchronized snapshots, conflict resolition, diffs, change tracking..
asnyder
I know Liveblocks.io has been making this very easy and accessible over the last few years. They recently introduced AI, and are promoting that of course, but as I understand it multiplayer collaboration (https://liveblocks.io/multiplayer-editing) is their meat and potatoes.
Not affiliated with Liveblocks, just aware of its existence.
wrren
Elixir's Phoenix LiveView + PubSub covers a lot of these bases out of the box.
thruflo
PubSub and LiveView do go a long way. However, broadcast isn't sync and LiveView isn't appropriate for all applications.
Phoenix recently added Phoenix.Sync [0], a sync engine library explicitly designed [1] to address this. In combination with a front-end library like TanStack DB [2] it goes much further towards giving you a Figma/Linear-style sync engine out of the box [3].
[0] https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_sync [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IWShnVuRCg [2] https://electric-sql.com/blog/2025/07/29/local-first-sync-wi... [3] https://electric-sql.com/demos/burn
Disclaimer: Electric founder. Linking to my own talk / post / demo.
simultsop
There were some additional posts regarding the topic by same guy. https://hachyderm.io/@evanw
Innovators like him, are very rare.
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andrewmcwatters
All the fundamentals have existed for at least 26 years. So, no, not really.
dang
Discussed at the time:
How Figma's Multiplayer Technology Works - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21378858 - Oct 2019 (63 comments)
dostick
Figma was born out of founder’s need to find a proof of concept test case for real-time collaboration JavaScript engine they created. They stumbled on this idea. Back then everyone used Sketch and wanted better prototyping and interaction design, and Figma appeared with its real time collaboration as major point which you used once just to try and never again.
Figma is one of the worst evils of corporate capitalism. The design oriented development is long ceases, mainly focusing on making new useless products because they need growth for shareholders. Considered a leader in UIUX design software while its own UIUX is abysmal, full of amateur level mistakes, inconsistencies and bad patterns. We have now a generation of designers that take Figma’s UX as an example to learn from and implement in their designs.
aswan
> Figma was born out of founder’s need to find a proof of concept test case for real-time collaboration JavaScript engine they created. They stumbled on this idea.
citation needed?
The article discusses adding collaboration to an existing application, the opposite of what this comment asserts.
bullen
I think player is a misnomer here. Multiuser editing would be better.
Also websockets are complicated. So are WebRTC or HTTP/2+ solutions.
HTTP/1.1 Comet-Stream is still the silver bullet even when ISPs try to block them, it's the protocol that goes through best (99.6% in 2022)
I'm considering doing a multi-socket solution: 80 (HTTP Comet-Stream) and 3724 (Binary TCP because WoW).
bobbylarrybobby
They've likened their product to a game engine, so multiplayer seems appropriate.
bogwog
Interesting article, but why does it randomly switch from dark to light mode once you scroll past a certain point?
tobyjsullivan
It changes when I scroll to the animations.
My guess is they implemented dark mode, then discovered some legacy posts have videos with transparent backgrounds. As a quick fix, they decided to disable dark mode anytime someone scrolls down to a video.
Seems like one of those compromises to solve an 11th-hour bug.
654wak654
The videos have white backgrounds, maybe it's to match that and keep the page cleaner.
rudi-c
The contents of this article are pretty old, but the static website's design has been revamped (I believe several times) since then. My guess it that the two may have just fallen out of sync in such a way that this particular oddity manifests.
krisknez
Because it's cool
Traubenfuchs
...and why does the switch point have a small hysteresis?
guluarte
Why is their CTO suspended on Twitter https://x.com/evanwallace ?
echelon
What happened? Is there a story behind this?
meowtimemania
IIRC there was a period of time where you could get suspended for trivial things like mentioning twitter
wetpaws
[dead]
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hola404
[dead]
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Linear's write ups / talks on real-time sync are also very good, if a bit old now.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxK11RsLqp4&t=2169s
2. https://linear.app/now/scaling-the-linear-sync-engine
Also see this overview of related tech here:
3. https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/3e039677f2e314cb77ffe3497...
And c.f. automerge from ink & switch:
4.https://automerge.org/blog/