Serena, I think the ASICs are a greater existential threat than the devs that have not yet forked realise. I have just looked - the network hash rate is now at over 100MH/s. it has literally quadrulpled in a few days and will likely go higher. I too am a fan of what of what the team is doing, but right now the priority has to be getting rid of the ASICs. If that takes a week of dev time - and that means a week later roll-out of Atlantis (or even three weeks) so what?. On balance, its a risk of the whole project being killed Vs a few weeks delay and ongoing development.
The same argument is going on over at Aeon right now. From where I sit I have entirely lost confidence and trust in dev team over there. They claim that the community and decentralisation is critical to the coin’s success - but are doing nothing to stop the complete undermining of both those aspects - and pools are closing too as people move to other coins. The same will happen here unless this ASIC problem is elevated in priority.
Any coin which claims that decentralisation is important but does NOT address the ASIC problem as a matter of urgency is at best stuck in a bunker mentality that refuses to see the real existential threats - at worst is just about hype and screwing the community. I will HODL everything I have because all of this is a speculative investment, but I will no longer support further any coin which does not address the ASICs quickly.
This is MY position. I great faith in the Devs’ ability - and Atlantis seems really amazing - but just as Betamax trusted in its technology to win over the inferior VHS technology and refused to address the existential threat which they could see was winning right in front of them, so too will those coins that do not move against the ASICs IMO.
I could live with the network hash rate at ~ 50MH/s - just, but it has literally doubled overnight. At this rate it will likely be 1GH/s by the time of Atlantis release even allowing for a tapering off - it will certainly be over 500 MH/s. That will be around a 100 fold increase in hashing pretty much all from ASICs. I doubt the coin can survive that. I am not that sure it isn’t already too late …