On the ASIC commodization (besides that I already pointed out the fact that it wouldn't totally level the time-to-market access and does nothing to account for free electricity charged to the collective), it appears the opposite might occur:
It will be interesting to see how this AsicBoost affair
will turn out. If Core has its way, then the signal is not
of course that patents are no-no, but, keep your
innovations hush-hush.
If Core devs start to make changes that pull the rug
under Chinese miners (they've now mentioned switch to SHA-3
couple of times), they can begin to support an alternative
such as Classic (or just whip up homegrown clone). If executed
skillfully, with Chinese goverment support, China may own
up Bitcoin totally before all the altcoin folks get to conf their
gpus to keccak.
It can get messy when you've got multiple centers of power locked in a
precarious balance, instead of true decentralization (if such a thing
is possible)
What? Ethereum devs actually - develop?