Do NOT trust Braiins OS+ - shady company, takes up to 10% dev fee and more

[Lanaa]

Hi everyone,

This post is regarding the dev fee in Braiins and my concerns with their Stratum V2 protocol.

Here’s what their FAQ says about the “dev fee”:

When you use Braiins OS+, we collect a 2-2.5% dev fee (depending on hardware model) by directing that percentage of your hashing power to our pool. It’s up to you which pool you mine with for the remaining 97.5-98%. Note that the dev fee is never exactly the specified percentage of your total hashing power, as this number is always changing in real-time whenever you are mining. However, it will always remain within a fixed tolerance as described in the License.

When you click on the License hyperlink it takes you to the License for their other product, Farm Proxy. (https://braiins.com/farm-proxy/license) That license makes no mention of a dev fee.

Here is the interesting part.

I changed the URL to go to braiins(.)com/os/plus/license and there was a 404 error.
I proceeded to save this page on the Waybackmachine on archive.org (on July 26th) - you can check it out here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220726060453/braiins.com/os/plus/license

(I will explain later in this post why I saved it on archive.org)

I contacted their team about this last month and told them to fix this. Here is what they had to say:

I'll follow up on it from our team and will let you know ASAP.

Regards,

--
Behzad
Support Team

braiins.com I slushpool.com

They did not correct the link. As of today, they still haven’t.
I contacted them again early this month, and they gave me the exact same response.

I contacted them again, and asked if they could simply send a link to the real license, as they must’ve made one. I got a reply 3 or 4 days later on 2022-08-04, and it was exactly what I assumed they would do.

​

You can read Braiins OS+ license here: https://braiins.com/os/plus/license

Regards,

--
Behzad
Support Team

braiins.com I slushpool.com

So theres that. They changed the link that I saved earlier that goes to a 404 page to show the real license, only a few days ago. I have emails with them to support this. Here is what their license says:

You acknowledge that due to the nature of computing power and computing power routing it is not technically possible to always assign the exact percentage of computing power. Therefore, You acknowledge that the amount of computing power actually assigned by the Software at the start of each session is random and it takes few seconds before a correct percentage of computing power is assigned. For the same reasons the amount of computing power assigned at any given time to perform processing operations for Braiins may be as much as 10 % higher or lower than the amount agreed above according to the section 5 hereof.

What do we see from all this?

• Braiins only added the license for their site after I asked them for it
• The original link to the license on every page of their site still goes to https://braiins.com/farm-proxy/license as of today despite my numerous attempts to point it out to them.  As of September 2nd, it now redirects to the real license. However, they were aware of this error for months and simply refused to fix it.
• The license says the computing power at the "start of every session" is random and takes few seconds before a "correct percentage ... is assigned". Yet in the next sentence, it then says "the amount of computing power assigned at any given time to perform processing operations for Braiins may be as much as 10 % higher or lower". So, which one is it? These statements are contradictory, or at the very least designed to be misleading.
• Braiins OS+ is closed source, and theres no way in the software to show how much is going to this "dev fee". It simply shows the total hash rate, always.
• A bit unrelated but: the Stratum V2 protocol they've been spearheading would allow them to do whatever they want and take whatever hash power, as it is encrypted and no one would be able to tell

My advice for everyone is to use the stock Bitmain firmware (the company Artemis3 here seems to hate with a passion) because it gives the exact same hash rate as Braiins OS+. Yes, it really does. For example, on an Antminer S9 their new firmware gives several options, and one of them is to increase the hash rate by 2TH. I tried this myself, and my hash rate is 16.5th/s - the exact same I got with Braiins.

I wish people here would stop blindly trusting shady firmwares without reading into things and start asking questions.
What is a dev fee? Where can we see it? Why is the link for their license going to a different product? Why would Bitmain prevent you, the customer, from making it difficult to install a custom firmware? Miners are not game consoles. Bitmain is not Nintendo or Sony. Bitmain calls custom firmwares viruses on their official website - is that not what this is? Braiins OS+ does not show you how much of your hash rate is going towards this dev fee. There's no doubt that this is by design.

In my opinion, these are huge issues and a stain on Braiins. I can no longer trust them, nor can I support the Stratum V2 protocol that they are spearheading since it seems like an obvious way to encrypt data from their dev fee to their server (as much as up to 10%) without anyone noticing.

Edit: as of September 2nd, the links to their website now redirect to their actual license - I have updated the post to reflect that. My other concerns still remain.

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[DaveF]

Looking at https://web.archive.org/web/20220207120417/https://braiins.com/os/plus/license the license page was there as of 7 Feb 2022 so between then and when you forced an archive back in July it changed. Could have been 2 minutes before you clicked on it or it could have been 2 minutes after the last archiving. Unless someone else archived it someplace else we can't know.

As for the percentages / hash rate some people feel the power savings and speed improvements that *they* see is worth it. As always YMMV. Some people have discussed good speed improvements and much lower power use. Others, like you have seen very little or none. If you have hardware that can be pushed harder at a lower voltage you will probably benefit more then someone putting it on an old & abused miner that can't do much more.

-Dave

[philipma1957]

To all braiins + charges a fee.

and braiins + allows superior underclocking for many

models of bitmain gear.

So if you have gear that runs hot and needs to be downclocked braiins + and regular braiins are likely a better choice then stock bitmain gear.

If you are running any type of  s9 at 16 th you are not underclocking that s9

you are better off with bitmain firmware.

 since you are pushing the gear hard and it works with high power use.

so op has some accuracy in the case of pushed s9 gear of any type.

but the s9 gear has passed its life for many miners.

i use some braiins and some braiins plus with s17 and t17 gear and it keeps my gear cool for the summer.

so the op is completely missing that point.

also the op is obviously not new and is hiding behind a newbie account.

so to talk about a lack of transparency is sad why not just post who you are instead of hiding behind your keyboard.

this is phil from howell,nj 07731 signing out.

[Lanaa]

Looking at https://web.archive.org/web/20220207120417/https://braiins.com/os/plus/license the license page was there as of 7 Feb 2022 so between then and when you forced an archive back in July it changed. Could have been 2 minutes before you clicked on it or it could have been 2 minutes after the last archiving. Unless someone else archived it someplace else we can't know.

As for the percentages / hash rate some people feel the power savings and speed improvements that *they* see is worth it. As always YMMV. Some people have discussed good speed improvements and much lower power use. Others, like you have seen very little or none. If you have hardware that can be pushed harder at a lower voltage you will probably benefit more then someone putting it on an old & abused miner that can't do much more.

-Dave

Hi Dave, thanks for pointing that out. Regardless, it was gone since then, for an entire 6 months, and I made numerous attempts to tell them to correct it, they haven't. I have emails from their support (and they can confirm this) that they updated that page only a few days ago.

I feel like the bigger issue here is a 10% dev fee and their obvious attempts to make people unaware of it. And again, as of today, their website still links to a different license.

I disagree with your second point because a) I've seen a improvement in hash rate and power use with stock firmware and b) the aforementioned 10% dev fee.

also the op is obviously not new and is hiding behind a newbie account.

so to talk about a lack of transparency is sad why not just post who you are instead of hiding behind your keyboard.

this is phil from howell,nj 07731 signing out.

Hi Phil, I have no clue why you would assume that or what I would gain from that. Is Bitmain paying me to tell people to use stock firmware? I wish. If I had another account, why wouldn't I say this there?

Also, this is the internet and no matter what account I use, you and I are both behind a keyboard.

[DaveF]

... the aforementioned 10% dev fee.....

From what I am reading, it's not saying 10% it's saying 2% to 2.5% +/- 10% so it can be as low as 1.8% or as high as 2.75% and although I don't think many people would care about it being 10% less there are a lot of people who would complain about 10% more.

And with a tiny bit of network knowledge and equipment it's easy to see where where data is flowing to and from for your miner. And see where and what is being done. MANY people dislike aftermarket mining software and would love to stand up and scream and show proof of what it's doing. A bit of wireshark and you can see every packet coming in and out of your miner. Now that's not to say they could not be doing other things in the background. i.e. underclock and undervolt when mining for you and overclock and overvolt when mining for them, but in reality that much extra programing and work for what would in the end be not that much more hash is probably not worth it.

-Dave

[Lanaa]

... the aforementioned 10% dev fee.....

From what I am reading, it's not saying 10% it's saying 2% to 2.5% +/- 10% so it can be as low as 1.8% or as high as 2.75% and although I don't think many people would care about it being 10% less there are a lot of people who would complain about 10% more.

And with a tiny bit of network knowledge and equipment it's easy to see where where data is flowing to and from for your miner. And see where and what is being done. MANY people dislike aftermarket mining software and would love to stand up and scream and show proof of what it's doing. A bit of wireshark and you can see every packet coming in and out of your miner. Now that's not to say they could not be doing other things in the background. i.e. underclock and undervolt when mining for you and overclock and overvolt when mining for them, but in reality that much extra programing and work for what would in the end be not that much more hash is probably not worth it.

-Dave

I believe a lot of people would care if its 10%.

Your second point brings me to my concern with Stratum V2 that I mentioned - the protocol Braiins is aggressively spearheading. This would not allow you to see any packets with Wireshark nor what they contain.

Not going to comment on what you believe is worth it or not, I believe it is and we can disagree on that.

[kano]

...
And with a tiny bit of network knowledge and equipment it's easy to see where where data is flowing to and from for your miner. And see where and what is being done.
...

Alas you cannot, it encrypts the 'extra' data inside the miner, so you can only see 'where' it is going.
You cannot see how much the fee is nor what other data is sent.
Also it's close source so you can't even check any of that.

[DaveF]

...
And with a tiny bit of network knowledge and equipment it's easy to see where where data is flowing to and from for your miner. And see where and what is being done.
...

Alas you cannot, it encrypts the 'extra' data inside the miner, so you can only see 'where' it is going.
You cannot see how much the fee is nor what other data is sent.
Also it's close source so you can't even check any of that.

In theory you can get close if you are not mining at the same pool they are. IF you just follow the where you can see how many stratum requests do to dave pool and how many go to slushpool.
Some basic math will get you in the ballpark. You would probably not be able to see 2.5% vs 3.25% but could figure out 2.5% vs 7%

As for the firmware itself, there are plenty of users who have reported lower energy use along with the same or better poolside hashrate. So from anecdotal evidence there are many people who use it and are satisfied.
Some people have seen no benefit or even worse results, even in the same farm. So at a guess if the equipment is already at it's limit there is very little else that can be done.

Would I use it? No, but that's me and my choice, I would not stop anyone from using it if they felt it worked for them.

-Dave

[Lanaa]

As for the firmware itself, there are plenty of users who have reported lower energy use along with the same or better poolside hashrate. So from anecdotal evidence there are many people who use it and are satisfied.
Some people have seen no benefit or even worse results, even in the same farm. So at a guess if the equipment is already at it's limit there is very little else that can be done.

Would I use it? No, but that's me and my choice, I would not stop anyone from using it if they felt it worked for them.

-Dave

My point of making this post was not to bash on Braiins OS as a firmware or it’s efficiency. It was to raise awareness about about Braiins’ misleading claims and deceptive practices. These are some pretty big issues ignored by the mining community as we tend to have a “every man for themselves” attitude - which is normal but personally I would try to stop people from using it, or at the very least, hope to get an answer from Braiins.

[mikeywith]

I don't even want to discuss the efficiency difference between the stock firmware and the custom firmware, I have tested them on hundreds of miners, and the auto-tuning on custom firmware makes my gears more effienct and run a lot cooler, while I don't use BO+ (I use a different famous custom firmware) I would like to point out something regarding the fees.

At least for the ones I tried, the perctange is time based, the software assumes your miner will run for 24 hours straight, so that's 1,440 mins, so it needs to mine to the devfee pool for 28.8 mins to get a 2%, but they won't let you mine to your own pool for 1,411.2 mins and then take their 28.8 mins, they will split the 28.8 mins into short intervals, which usually starts in the first a few minutes after the miner get's to it's peak/stable hashrate, so let's assume they wait for 2 mins to get their first 28.8/24 mins, so you get 2 mins on your pool and then they get 1.2 on theirs, at this point the fee is 26.66%, it only becomes 2% if the miner runs for a whole hour and they get only 1.2 mins, but if your miner is tuning or restarting for whatever reason, the fees will be a lot higher.

the above was just an example, I don't recall the exact figures of how the brain or even the firmware I use goes about collecting fees, but I have carefully inspected the fee collecting process and you can only come to a conclusion after letting your miner mine for long enough, I am not saying your concern is wrong, but I saw someone claim that some custom firmware fees were like 30% simply by counting the accepted shares, but then he ignored the fact that the devfee pool had a very low difficulty and thus had a dozen more accepted shares than the main pool.

I would suggest a somehow accurate way to confirm the fees, use the stock firmware at default settings, mine to a pool for 1 week and then get your week average hashrate, use BO+ for another week and see your new average hashrate, I am positive it won't be anywhere near 10%, not even 1% higher than the claimed fee.

Now regarding their shady way of dealing with the license I have nothing to say about that, you presented your case nice and clean.

Why would Bitmain prevent you, the customer, from making it difficult to install a custom firmware?

That doesn't mean bitmain is a guardian angel, they lock their firmware in a very disgusting way, you can't even change the fan speed, the only firmware that had a few options was the multi-option firmware for the S9 and after that you could hardly do anything with your miner, besides, bitmain don't want to deal with support/warranty tickets, overclocking your miner makes it more likely to break.

Bitmain calls custom firmwares viruses on their official website - is that not what this all is?

Just another false claim by the devil Bitmain, in fact, most viruses I heard of or dealt with personally like Nightswitcher, Antbuild were in the stock firmware, of course, that doesn't mean custom firmware are not subject to the same viruses, but after all, most of these viruses are the result of reckless actions take by the miner's owner.

In the end, as I said, I don't use BO+, I wouldn't advise anyone to not/use it, but I think it's somehow unfair to read out of context and claim the fees are 10% without having had a proper test.

[Lanaa]

Why would Bitmain prevent you, the customer, from making it difficult to install a custom firmware?

That doesn't mean bitmain is a guardian angel, they lock their firmware in a very disgusting way, you can't even change the fan speed, the only firmware that had a few options was the multi-option firmware for the S9 and after that you could hardly do anything with your miner, besides, bitmain don't want to deal with support/warranty tickets, overclocking your miner makes it more likely to break.

Bitmain calls custom firmwares viruses on their official website - is that not what this all is?

Just another false claim by the devil Bitmain, in fact, most viruses I heard of or dealt with personally like Nightswitcher, Antbuild were in the stock firmware, of course, that doesn't mean custom firmware are not subject to the same viruses, but after all, most of these viruses are the result of reckless actions take by the miner's owner.

In the end, as I said, I don't use BO+, I wouldn't advise anyone to not/use it, but I think it's somehow unfair to read out of context and claim the fees are 10% without having had a proper test.

Thanks for the info, I understand that Braiins has benefits over stock and we are agreeing on the same things. I don’t believe Bitmain is a guardian angel but my purpose of the post is to hold Braiins to account as well. I have no doubt your claims are true, but it doesn’t exempt them from criticism. Braiins is a for-profit company, just like Bitmain is - we should see no difference between them.

I want to make a comparison here: Antbleed for example was a theoretical exploit by Bitmain that caused a huge commotion and yet has never been spotted in the wild. Bitmain offered a explanation for it (which made sense but I take with a grain of salt) and removed it from their code. Now compare it to the fact that there’s 1000s of devices sending hash rate to slushpool at a much higher rate than users know. I believe that is a much bigger issue and is more of a “virus”. Aside from that, I believe Bitmain locks SSH due to the fact you stated yourself - that users would install viruses.

The license is not taken out of context, I provided the link and posted a specific part that doesn’t seem to make sense. I’d love if Braiins would clarify any of this. I totally agree that we need to have a proper test; we need more transparency about this altogether.

[kano]

...
And with a tiny bit of network knowledge and equipment it's easy to see where where data is flowing to and from for your miner. And see where and what is being done.
...

Alas you cannot, it encrypts the 'extra' data inside the miner, so you can only see 'where' it is going.
You cannot see how much the fee is nor what other data is sent.
Also it's close source so you can't even check any of that.

In theory you can get close if you are not mining at the same pool they are. IF you just follow the where you can see how many stratum requests do to dave pool and how many go to slushpool.
Some basic math will get you in the ballpark. You would probably not be able to see 2.5% vs 3.25% but could figure out 2.5% vs 7%
...

Alas that theory is based on nothing.
Current stratum has 2 things that come and go except during connections. Work from the pool and shares to the pool.
Though due to slush not wanting to fix his pool code and fix stratum, when I argued it with him at the start, stratum has two items related to work.

Their pool already claims to allow other information to be passed, but since it's encrypted, you cannot tell when or how often other information is passed to slush and what it is.

Assuming it will only be shares and work is already obviously incorrect.

[mikeywith]

but it doesn’t exempt them from criticism. Braiins is a for-profit company, just like Bitmain is - we should see no difference between them.

Indeed, nobody should be exempted from criticism, I was not implying that you should not point fingers to Braiins, I was merely trying to say that just because Bitmain claims other firmware are viruses it does not mean we should believe them, in the same way I would not trust Braiins with fees stated on thier website without examining that myself.

The license is not taken out of context, I provided the link and posted a specific part that doesn’t seem to make sense.

My English is far from perfect, but the way I understand the link you posted is 10% of the fees stated, so fees*1.1 or fees*0.9 not 100%*0.1, but your title states 10% of 100% which is why I think it was taken out of context, but I don't disagree with the fact that the statement could be interpreted in a different way and that they have to be more detailed.

[Artemis3]

Well, if you want to find out, mine against your own pool. Its not like there is not a pool operator posting here for some reason...

The fee is 2.5%, this is immutable and hard coded. For S9, it is 2%, also hard coded and immutable. There are no choices of changing this. Unlike other firmware, you cannot add hidden groups on top of the existing one by request, whitelabel, or whatever.

Point it to your own pool locally and measure, you will get either 97.5% or 98% of the hashrate. The miner dashboard reports 100% (Real) hashrate, the pool will only get 97.5% or 98% from that.

If you add groups and assign a fixed ratio, you will notice there is a hidden group always taking 2.5%, so you only have 97.5% available to split. Its not 90%, 95%, or whatever random fake account of the month decides to invent because they don't like when i point the fact that all other firmware infringes cgminer license while Braiins doesn't. Too bad that pool operator doesn't care and prefers to join the badmouthing crowd without proof, as usual.

Farm proxy is another project, and has a different license. It has no fees, can be used without Braiins OS.

[kano]

You are quoting a bunch of numbers there and claims that cannot be proven.

It's closed source, and the output data to slush is encrypted, no matter what pool you mine on.

Not sure why you keep making the same statements without anyone being able to prove them.

Though it is quite clear that some of what you have stated is marketing, not fact.
The 2% and 2.5% cannot be guaranteed, they are an estimate based on random data.
Saying they are 'immutable' and 'hard coded' means nothing more than make people feel warm and fuzzy but not a guarantee of an actual number.

As already explained, they can be way off and restarting the miner wont make up for the losses.

[Artemis3]

Why don't you test it yourself then? You have a pool don't you? Didn't you say others don't test and yet you are doing precisely that, not testing but seeding FUD, like all the time you claimed it didn't find blocks, and yet, it always did.

You are doubting the hashrate split, and you can easily test that yourself. You can for sure determine you get 97.5% (or 98%) and not 90% like OP is claiming without any evidence.

You are free to speculate what the 2% or 2.5% of the hashrate is used for since its encrypted, believe it or not, it goes to the pool operated by Braiins which was formerly called Slush Pool. But what you cannot say is that this is suddenly "10%", that is a blatant lie.

Speaking of closed source, i have still not seen you demanding Bitmain, MicroBT, Canaan and others publish their modifications to cgminer. Its funny you say "Braiins just read the code of others" while you yourself seem to have only reached (somehow, not disclosed how) the BM1397 but not the BM1398. Oh and how long has bosminer+ supported BM1397 before you added it to cgminer? So no.

Braiins did the work to figure those chips out, did you? Those who just mod cgminer with the implementation already done by the manufacturer are oblivious about this work. It is not the same thing at all, its like "pirating" existing software vs making an alternative to replace it from scratch.

Ah yes, there is also the BM1396, BM1362, BMi1366...

[hZti]

If some of the hashrate is sent to slush pool, wouldn't it be at least be possible to block the connection to the pool? You would not get the 2% of hashrate back, but maybe this would lower the power consumption if the miner will not be able to connect to the pool that usually takes the 2%

[NotFuzzyWarm]

If some of the hashrate is sent to slush pool, wouldn't it be at least be possible to block the connection to the pool? You would not get the 2% of hashrate back, but maybe this would lower the power consumption if the miner will not be able to connect to the pool that usually takes the 2%

Nope - can't do that. It's a type of software license key. ANY firmware that uses the DEVfee model requires that it can periodically  'phone home', in this case to get the DEVfee work and send back the results. If the connection is blocked the miner stops working until the connection is reestablished.

[hZti]

Nope - can't do that. It's a type of software license key. ANY firmware that uses the DEVFee model requires that it can periodically  'phone home', in this case to get the DEVFee work and send back the results. If the connection is blocked the miner stops working until the connection is reestablished.

Makes sense to do that. It is kind of a shame that bitmain as the manufacturer of the ASIC can't do an equal mining program that they give to their paying customers. However it is great that it is possible that the developers of Braiins can earn money, since otherwise they wouldn't share the awesome software.

[Artemis3]

Well the manufacturer has been making plenty of money selling the machines, so they could easily afford to develop their own mining program and yet...

On the other hand, the only group doing actual r+d of things not documented anywhere gets false accusations from jealous people who can't produce their own mining program either.

Braiins OS is the only solution that does not pirate cgminer, at least in its limited selection of supported ASIC miners that were painstakingly figured out without anyone's help.

Every time the manufacturer introduces a new model or does some change, this work needs to be done again to be able to support the new variant. Precisely because they did not release the changes they made to cgminer to support those changes, which is a clear violation of the license.