It seems to me ASIC for this coin at the moment is simply not profitable to produce. Existing devices need time to gain full power - they are constantly in operation. Even if you release a special firmware, the energy costs will be large or the device will not be able to gain full power. For this purpose it is necessary that first of all it was economically profitable. But for the GPU I think will make the miner in the end.
I would much rather it end up as a GPU mining coin, as I have gpu rigs not Asics. I just am unsure of the technical requirements behind ASICs and if you could make them abide by the metronomes rest period. If it will take adieionao hardware development then yes we are probably a ways away from anything if that nature
There are Sha256 miners that run on GPU's. Someone just needs to recode one to respond to the metronome and to then use the last BTC blockhash to appropriately submit the solution. Right now all that GPU miners do is spam the pool with useless garbage. That is why the whitelist is necessary at this point.