This is the first entry in a weekly log we will keep through the DCENT_OS public-beta run-up. The idea is simple: a firmware project you cannot watch is a firmware project you cannot trust. So every week we will write down where DCENT_OS actually is — what is working, what is not, and what is blocking the next public step. No hype, no countdown theatre. If something slips, this log says so first.
Where things stand
DCENT_OS is in closed beta on the Antminer S9 today. There are no public image downloads yet — every slot in the download area reads “Support incoming,” and that is on purpose. We do not publish an image for a model and control board until we can also publish how to recover that exact board if a flash goes wrong. For experimental firmware running on hardware you paid real money for, the recovery path is the feature.
In practice that means a mining daemon written in Rust running the three modes — Basic Heat, Standard Mine, and Advanced Hack — on S9 hardware, with a 0% mandatory dev-fee target. The work that gates the first public download is the unglamorous part: validating each S9 control-board family (XIL / BB / CV / AML) and proving the rollback story on each before anything ships to the public.
The honest version of “summer 2026”
The most-repeated promise on our site is “public beta, summer 2026.” We have published a dated beta-status page so that promise has somewhere honest to point. The short version: public beta opens in stages, starting with the first downloadable Antminer S9 SD card image; S19 and S21 follow. The date is an estimate. We ship when an image is safe to flash — the same way we quote hand-built hardware lead times: an honest estimate, never a guarantee of speed.
Why a log, not a launch
We have watched enough mining-firmware projects go quiet and get written off as abandoned. The antidote is not a louder launch; it is a visible pulse. So GitHub is where builds get announced — watch the repository, releases are the broadcast; Discord is where testers talk; and this log is the weekly written record. We collect waitlist emails and reach out exactly once — when your slot opens. We do not send newsletters.
Shoulders
None of this starts from zero. DCENT_OS stands on the CGMiner / BMMiner lineage, Braiins’ open-source firmware and Stratum V2 work, Luxor’s tooling for the mining community, and the open-ASIC community — skot9000 and the ESP-Miner / AxeOS project — on the Bitaxe side. DCENT_OS is one more layer of a stack other people started: one more layer of your mining decentralized, from the silicon up to the firmware that drives it.
Want in?
Join the S9 closed-beta waitlist (waitlist only — not a pre-order), watch the repository, and join the Discord. Build Log #2 lands next week.
