We [1] used to think the same thing a few years back, but then figured out empirically that virtualization (above the React layer) will let you view/scroll through virtually unlimited-size datasets (until you hit the browser's memory limit per tab).

So, at this point, I would say canvas is not required to render large grids in modern browsers (even though Google Sheets does this for likely legacy reasons)

[1] You can see how we render large grids at

https://mintdata.com/docs in the example sections.