
Kinda. Whatsapp requires you to connect with the phone number at least once per week, if I'm not mistaken. If the phone goes offline too long, all linked devices stop sending/receiving messages.
I tried pidgin with whatsapp back in 2023, the experience was terrible. Whenever there was a new message in a group, it'd automatically spawn a new tab. It couldn't read saved contact names, it always showed people as the phone number, which is their whatsapp UID. You also never knew if the image that someone sent was a photo or a sticker, you have to manually download and open every one of them.