It's the worst possible combination. All of the downsides of web apps (poor performance, memory use, poor integration, etc.) and native apps (security problems, hard to update, etc.), without the advantages of either one.
Why would I want to download your specially packaged browser, without adblock or uMatrix or any of that, just to basically view a website anyway?
Then the user can run your chat/music/text editor in the background, have it appear in the taskbar, and start boot, at the cost of requiring a few gigabytes of RAM and 25% CPU utilization while idling.
Personally I'd rather have Progressive Web Apps but for some reason, those are still in an awkward stage.
And none of those "benefits" have any advantage over running the web app in its own window.
It's a hack to use cheap web developers to check off the "standalone app" checkbox.
Is that supposed to be an advantage? ;)
Yes you do. Because some people understand UI design and know how to program in javascript/html/css and have a need to make a desktop app.
For example, a small budget indie startup has enough to make ONE version of their app to get funding. They can use JS with the same budget and launch on Web, PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android instead of just making a single Windows native app.
There is 100% a place for electron. You can argue that after funding they should convert to native, sure. But if you're reading HN you are definitely smart enough to know why a lot of us use electron :)
tldr; Smart use of electron is NOT for the end user. It's for the developer.