Almost all of my Linux devices have both chromium-browser and Firefox installed. Firefox is my default, but there are some apps out there that work a lot better in something chromium-based.
It is really disingenuous to say "X is just a skin of Y" just because they share the same browser engine or are forked from the same browser. Like you say, there are a lot of changes.
Why not use Librewolf? Fork of Firefox, hardened and resists fingerprinting. Scores pretty damn well on https://privacytests.org and pairs well with Mull on Android.
AFAIK there are no actively developed Brave forks.
I use librewolf on my work laptop it removes all cookies every time you close it, this wouldn't be a problem on mobile as I already set my phone browser(fennec) to do that but on my personal computer it crosses the border from I can deal with it to too inconvenient
I agree the crypto stuff is super annoying, but it's a really nice and clean browser after you disable all that and tweak the settings (which you'd probably want to go through and configure with a new browser anyway)
even as a crypto user & dev, brave's crypto shit is annoying af, it's inferior by far to what everyone else uses & they push it on ur face & make u have to remove it.
i'd rather just use firefox or even microsoft edge, even for crypto stuff
We recommend just switching to Brave and disabling the 'crytpo crap' yourself rather than using a fork that is liable to go unmaintained and miss updates.
They are less invasive on the privacy front, but they also push their products much harder down user's throat due to less revenue from less accurate ads, just look at DDG's frontpage.
I also found them self-censoring towards IPs from China, albeit this could be the direct result of using Bing's search results.
It's much easier to compare it with something like SearXNG which has the same core principle, without ads, without censorships, without invasive marketing.
If fingerprint protection is what I want, LibreWolf comes with a very sensible default as compared to stock Firefox. If I am familiar enough with about.config and stuff then hardened Firefox can reach bonkers levels of privacy as well
If a Chromium-based browser is required that has Brave's level of privacy protection but none of the crypto nonsense... Yeah I'm not aware of any as of right now. Maybe once the Duckduckgo Browser becomes available?
Never trust anything that comes anywhere near crypto. Firefox with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's privacy badger plugin and a good adblocker is the way to go. https://privacybadger.org/