Definition
Bricking is the slang term for an ASIC miner that will no longer boot or respond after its firmware has been damaged, rendering the control board temporarily as useful as a brick. The hashboards and power supply may be perfectly healthy, but with no working software to drive them the machine does nothing. Most bricks are recoverable; the word describes a software state, not necessarily dead hardware.
What causes it
The classic trigger is a power interruption partway through firmware flashing, which leaves the on-board image incomplete. Other causes include flashing an image built for a different control board revision, or an image from an untrusted source that fails the bootloader's signature check on newer cryptographically-signed firmware. In each case the bootloader finds nothing it can validly execute.
Soft bricks versus hard bricks
A soft brick is the common, recoverable kind: the board cannot boot from internal storage but will boot from removable media, so SD card flashing restores it. A hard brick is rare, where even SD recovery fails; that usually points to a genuine hardware fault such as a damaged flash chip or a corrupted bootloader rather than a bad image. The defensive habits that prevent bricking are the same across all firmware: verify the image matches your board, never cut power mid-flash, and keep a config backup.
For recovery walkthroughs see our guides on fixing a failed firmware update and firmware fundamentals.
In Simple Terms
Bricking is the slang term for an ASIC miner that will no longer boot or respond after its firmware has been damaged, rendering the control…