DCENT_OS

Custom Bitcoin mining firmware for Bitmain Antminer hardware, built by D-Central Technologies.

DCENT_OS is designed to turn industrial ASIC miners into quieter, home-friendly miners and space heaters, with a Rust mining daemon, a Buildroot-based Linux OS, and a local dashboard for control and monitoring.

It is D-Central's effort to bring the first public, auto-tuned Antminer firmware to the world. The project is the result of months of work and hundreds of hours of captures, testing, and reverse engineering.

Large language models have been extremely helpful throughout the process, but a large part of this work is still deeply manual: hardware captures, validation, debugging, and reverse engineering on real miners. Even the LLM-assisted portion has a real cost, with millions of tokens spent during development.

Website: https://d-central.tech/dcent-os/

Current Status

• The codebase remains private while DCENT_OS is being prepared for its v1 release.
• Once v1 is ready, D-Central Technologies plans to fully open-source the project so anyone can compile it, study it, fork it, and build on it.
• The only hardware that should be tested right now is the Antminer S9.
• Antminer S19, Antminer S19 Pro, and Antminer S21 targets already have active code and build work, but they are not fully wired yet and are not ready for testing.
• Public beta S9 SD images will eventually be published in this GitHub repository.

What DCENT_OS Is

• A custom firmware stack for Antminer hardware built by D-Central Technologies
• A Rust-based mining daemon (dcentrald) with local APIs and a web dashboard
• A Buildroot-based Linux firmware image tailored for ASIC miners
• A clean D-Central codebase informed by reverse engineering and open-source references, not a fork of another mining firmware
• A firmware project aimed at quiet home mining, flexible power control, and long-term open development

Proven Today

• Native DCENT_OS boot has been proven on real Antminer S9 hardware
• Accepted pool shares have been proven on real S9 units
• A/B sysupgrade flow is working on Zynq-based S9 systems
• The Rust daemon, dashboard, and API are already running on live hardware
• Bring-up work for S19, S19 Pro, and S21 is underway, but those paths are still in development

Support Matrix

Hardware	Status	Testing Guidance
Antminer S9	Private beta	This is the only model that should be tested right now.
Antminer S19	In progress	Code exists, but it is not fully wired. Do not test yet.
Antminer S19 Pro	In progress	Code exists, but it is not fully wired. Do not test yet.
Antminer S21	In progress	Code exists, but it is not fully wired. Do not test yet.

Support beyond the S9 reflects active engineering work, not a public support claim.

Why This Project Exists

• No mandatory dev fee
• Firmware built for home miners, not just datacenter operators
• Quiet operation and space-heater-oriented control philosophy
• Original D-Central firmware stack instead of permanent dependence on third-party firmware vendors
• A mission to decentralize every layer of the Bitcoin mining ecosystem
• Planned full source release at v1

DCENT_OS stands on the shoulders of projects like BraiinsOS, ESP-Miner, Mujina, and other public reverse-engineering efforts, but the implementation here is D-Central's own code.

DCENT_OS is being released for free because D-Central's mission from the beginning has been to decentralize every layer of Bitcoin mining. That includes firmware, tooling, hardware access, and the ability for anyone to study, compile, modify, and eventually fork the stack.

Release Plan

• Pre-v1: private development, internal iteration, and selective beta testing
• Public beta phase: Antminer S9 SD images will be published in this GitHub repo
• v1.0: full source release so the community can compile, audit, fork, and extend DCENT_OS

Repository Layout

• dcentrald/ - Rust mining daemon workspace
• br2_external_dcentos/ - Buildroot external tree
• dashboard/ - React and TypeScript web dashboard
• scripts/ - build, deploy, flash, and SD image tooling
• docs/ - architecture notes, install guides, and research writeups
• releases/ - release bundles and the future home of public beta SD images

Documentation

• docs/DCENT_OS_INSTALL_GUIDE.md - S9 install and deployment guidance
• docs/DCENTRALD_ARCHITECTURE.md - runtime and system architecture
• docs/CUSTOM_FIRMWARE.md - project background and technical direction

Testing Note

• Test only on recoverable Antminer S9 hardware during the current beta stage.
• Keep a known-good recovery path before flashing experimental firmware.
• Do not treat S19, S19 Pro, or S21 code paths as ready for public use yet.