EDIT: Well, apparently ASICs are a good thing!
I`m not in favor of them. I`m surprised the change from DRK to DASH caused more uproar than this fundamental change. I thought ASIC resistance was a given feature with DASH.
I think is important to be clear that the Dash project is not in favor of ASIC mining centralization either. Having said that, just changing the algorithm is not really a long term solution either as they could just develop ASICs for the new algorithm. Also the issue is not intrinsically ASICS but the centralization that unfair cost advantages on certain locations produce. If everyone had competitive ASICs and electricity costs around the world it would not be an issue either.
So we are working on a potential solution to the centralization issue that does not necessarily include changing algorithms. Is in research and it may not turn out as expected but we are aware of the issue.
This was part of the latest official announcement by Evan:
Another very important point to make about the Satoshi Roundtable was the very large issue with mining centralization in the Bitcoin space. When Satoshi originally invented Bitcoin, he did not anticipate the excessive mining centralization that has become a dominant force in the Bitcoin space. Due to this, we now have a small group of people that literally control the protocol consensus and their short term interests may be in conflict with the long term interests of other stakeholders, industry, users, etc. We definitely do not want our ecosystem to follow the same failed course and we definitely would have under the pooled ASIC mining paradigm. This is mainly because there are differences in efficiency that a miner can gain depending on where they live, which can give a huge advantage when their higher investment returns are compounded. Efficiencies such as cheaper labor, cheap or free electricity and even withholding newer advanced ASICs for their own mining operations, then selling them after they become less effective. After many iterations of these phenomenon in BTC we have come to a situation where the ones who have access to these advantages effectively control Bitcoin.
After hours of discussions, we believe we have found the solution to the unfair mining advantages that produce centralization around certain jurisdictions that control the production of ASICS. We will be releasing much more information about this soon, but are feverishly working on this project for v12.1. Were going to be releasing much more information about this in the coming weeks; its going to be a giant advantage for the Dash project.