This whole “ASIC proof” has always escaped me. I have been involved with the development of multiple ASIC’s. My industry lives and dies by ASIC’s. The turn around time on a digital ASIC is short, and with creative collaborative mask development not expensive. For example: we and others would routinely piggy back our ASIC design into the mask (the expensive part) of someone else’s mask via the help of the foundry. Then every time the main had a fab run we would get x number of chips / wafer at a set cost from the foundry. We would use these as beta fab runs. Once the design was solid we could spend the money on our own mask or go slow and increase the chip count / wafer on someone else’s mask. There is always someone willing to split mask costs with another group and the foundries promote this. Having said this, there is still probe testing, wire bonding, and packaging that can be no small challenge. My point is: if there is money to be made, those with money will put in the work to make it with ASIC’s, and leave us in the dust. Today, only Bitcoin make sense to do this, for but in the future, who knows.