here is what ASIC are doing to the community so far. they are too expensive for a little guy to get an ASIC strong enough to compete with current hashrate. Not to mention never even ROI. So unless you spend over $10,000s you will not make it. This creates a harsh centralization of miners. Only the big boys win the game and makes is less appealing for little guys.
Look at our pools. our miners were getting thinner. probably since scrypt was running too hot on summer. The moment Karma rises , all the asic users jump on our network. We go from 1.2 Gh/s to 3.4 Gh/s. Which makes the small time miners even more frustrated because of the high difficulty jump.
look at this way. if i have $2000 i can set up a 2-3 Mh/s GPU miner or a 20 Mh/s Asic miner. You can see the imbalance ASIC offer. Miners would invest in GPUS more because at least they can use it for games or sell it back with %50 gain. but with asic you have 1-2 months to make roi and then its worthless.
By going to X11 all the GPU miners will have few more months to mine the coin in fair game. By then the ASICs will be much cheaper and they should be able to afford to switch to ASIC.
Also China mines love x11. they will jump in and will start to create additional trading market in their side of the world. Maybe we will finnally break in their exchanges. Like Bter.com and others : )
Not to be argumentative, but worrying about ROI on coins with a current value less than $.0002 USD is shortsighted, right? Cryptocurrency as a whole concept is a long term process. More than half of the population doesn't even know what it is. If we're in it for the quick money that's a different story. Karma created the Karmshares, LLC for long term potential. The BTC players are already looking to 2140 to devise structures & processes to handle the end of POW. At some point, we have to quit being so anti-technology when it comes to a sustainable network infrastructure that's important for transactions to process.
Ideally, the production of ASIC hardware reaches a point where the suppliers outweigh the consumers and then you see more & more new user entry into the mining side. Not because they're getting rich off of it, but because they're getting anything from it. Consider if VISA allowed home PC users to run a small USB item that would generate any type of additional income for a nominal startup cost and minimal expense. A penny saved is a penny earned, afterall. If you end the day with more money than you had previously you're on the right path. Certainly there's heavy users & light users, but it all counts in the end.