I swapped Firefox for Brave for a while but found it much harder to tune and tweak so I switched back. I like having Brave for when I need it but agree, tweaked Firefox is vastly superior to Brave. Sadly we seem to be among the few who get that.

Not necessarily a case of trusting Brave (I don't trust any browser but they are a necessity) but after testing Brave clearly does a better job of preventing tracking. No browser is perfect but some are better than others. The EFF offers a decent test of how well your browser prevents tracking.

I use Brave for when I need no tracking or to test if my various filters (NoScript, uBlock, etc) are screwing things up and Opera when I need to bypass my firewall restrictions.