If not for X11 evey btc farm out there would start mining dash, difficulty would go through the roof and only big chinese farms would make money.
I understand the rationale for chosing a non-SHA256 (BTC) algorithm to launch DRK/DASH with, and it served it's purpose well for a good long while.
How does remaining on the ASIC-dependent X11 algorithm prevent the same situation that X11 was chosen from occurring? (It hasn't!) The current situation is that hashing is increasingly only done by big farms (of whatever nationality) and not the widespread off-the-shelf hashing that it started with.
ASIC dependence is bad. Only those who are rich enough to develop ASICs will be hashing the majority before long. Sure some manufacturers will sell off a few units here and there, but the X11 road is not decentralized going forward.
For example, crunch the numbers on the (unreleased) iBelink DM11G, that produces 10.8GH/s for ~800w. I have read that iBelink is supposedly producing as many as 5000 units. If true, then that's 54TH/s due to hit the X11 algorithm over the coming months (and I would presume the majority will be mining DASH.) For comparison, at this writing, I see that the DASH network hashrate has hit 4.5TH/s, and is currently just below 3.5TH/s. There is no assurance that these new miners will be decentralized and not capable of overwhelming the existing miners.
Another aspect to the algorithm choice, is, as I understand it, X11 is made up of 11 sub-algorithms, and if any one of them is compromised, then the entire X11 algorithm is compromised. Does DASH have a contingency to this possibility becoming an actuality?
Do I expect that DASH will change algorithm to something CPU or GPU-only? No, not anytime soon, and there are a LOT of miners with a LOT at stake that won't let it happen without a fight. As for myself, I will continue to mine X11 with ASICs for as long as it is reasonably profitable, then shift to whatever is at the time. I hope that with the masternodes system, that a 51% network attack can be countered and the DASH network will remain stable through the imminent growing pains ahead.