forget about the smalltime gpu miners. They are screwed regardless of asic or not. Its about the philosophy of Zen. Diversity throughout the network is key to resilience. If Zen allows there consensus mechanism to be undermined it will threaten all other elements of the coin. If there is a bug, exploited or backdoor in a miners than it provides an attack vector. Think about a disease hitting a homogeneous population that has little resistance to that disease. That population will become extinct if the disease is lethal. But if the population has diversity then some will be affected but others will be resistant. GPU miners provided a very diverse group that support the consensus mechanism. Some use Linux other windows. Some use Nivida others AMD and there is a verity of equihash software out now.  if Zen does not see the threat then they should suffer the consequences.

Etherium is in a totally different position. The ASIC from Bitmain is not a thread as it is not better than a GPU at the moment. So adds more diversity but that will not remain the case for long. Zen is not so lucky as with Monero the Z3 is a game changer and will dominate the network in a short time.