I read it is better than flatpak/appimage/snap.

"Adapting Snap on deepin: Since Snap has many compatibility issues except for Ubuntu, we gave up.
- Converting some of our homegrown apps to AppImage: AppImage has good portability, and these apps can easily be used on other distributions. However, it doesn’t have centralized repository storage and package management, and doesn’t provide the same level of sandboxing as Snap and Flatpak, so its security can’t be guaranteed, and it’s not suitable to be used as the default package management method for the operating system.
- In 2017, deepin followed up the Flatpak format and completed the construction of 100+ packages, but did not continue to adapt due to the large size of the application, excessive disk
occupation, slow bug fixing and other reasons. "
Did someone consider it as better alternative for these package formats or is this just “15 standard” for package formats because deepin wanted to make something.

Are there any distros which use it apart from deepin and which is packaged in this format, because I want to drop flatpak because it takes too much space on my system.


Yes. Nix is fine as long as you do “supported” things. But the moment you step outside of that, it’s a nightmare and you have to be or consult an expert.
The lack of gpu acceleration is a dealbraker for making nix a flatpak alternative. And you can get it working but then it breaks the desktop integration unless you do more work and yeah.