I think you are overestimating the risks of hard forking in the first place. I mean, think about the time, money and effort that goes into companies, or other for profit small mining operations, to develop ASICs... To keep actively knocking them off the network, I think, will dissuade people from even attempting I would think.
Using hard forks as means to maintain the decentralized nature of the coin is far superior than letting more centralization to occur imo.
Yeah, to maintain ASIC-resistance forking periodically would make developing ASICs cost-prohibitive, short-term approach, but at the same time if you look at the long-term sustainability of such an approach, the possibilities mentioned in this article and also by a Monero developer, Proposal to consider an ASIC-friendly proof of work, can't be ruled out. After the April 6th hard fork, now there are four Monero's.
1. Continued and repeated ad-hoc modifications to the PoW algorithm may accidentally (or even maliciously) introduce exploits.
2. ASIC developers may build in more flexibility to their designs to be able to accommodate small algorithm tweaks (indeed this may already be the case, we don't know).
3. Potential for favoritism/corruption if plans for tweaks are leaked or influenced far enough ahead of time that some favored ASIC developers may have enough lead time to produce ASICs, while others do not.
4. A belief that ASICs may be desirable as a means to facilitate industrial scale mining and growing the network beyond what might be called a hobby mining phase.
5. Potential for increased monopolization if the strategy is only partially effective (i.e. keeps all but oneASIC developer from succeeding)
6. Dependence of the network on continued frequent hard forking independent of the need for functional upgrades. This carries with it a greater degree of centralization necessary to design, implement and coordinate these forks, without any real plan to transition beyond it.
Unlike the Monero community, Sia community took a different approach/different perspective.
Bitmain has a strong track record in Bitcoin of actively working to undermine core development, blocking important network upgrades (Segwit), backing contentious forks (Bitcoin Cash), building in backdoors (Antbleed), and much more. We consider Bitmain a bad actor in the cryptocurrency space.
At the same time, we recognize that we have a conflict of interest. Our own Obelisk SC1 is now competing directly with Bitmains A3. Though we have the ability to release a version of Sia that invalidates the A3s via a soft-fork, we believe that doing so before Bitmain has attacked our network would be a centralized, monopolistic move, rather than a proactive, protective measure.
Therefore, we will not be supporting a soft-fork at this time.
At this point in time, choosing to fork would mean compromising on our values as a company and a community, even though Bitmain poses a serious threat to the Sia network.
ASIC-resistance or ASIC-friendly, Bitmain is a bad actor in the cryptocurrency space, but economically they don't have any incentive to attack cryptos. They made a profit of up to $4 billion last year. With Samsung, Halong mining, Baikal and other manufacturer's entering the market, ASIC commodization eventually will happen and Bitmain's monopoly will end so IMO hard forks or ASIC-proof algorithms are more of a short-term solutions.
https://github.com/monero-project/monero/issues/3387https://blog.sia.tech/response-to-the-sia-community-and-bitmain-653a12284098