If the block size is pushed upward, then fewer individuals can afford to mine, and there are centralization risks with mining hardware ownership.
you do realise that its the pool owner that veryifies everything initially. right
you do realise that once verified the pool owner then sends out a jumble of data that the individual asics just have to do a simple hash to repeatedly.
this has nothing to do with bloat. and only related to difficulty.
even if it takes 60 seconds instead of 50 seconds for the pool owner to verify everything. the end result is still a clump of data that asics can hash the same way.
the clever stuff is not done by the asics. they are just handed some info and told to hash it. they do not do the individual checks.
thats for the full nodes (pools and users)
if you do not believe me. unscrew an ASIC and look for a hard drive.. storing all the data.. you wont find it