I see something called,

Next Gen Metastore

in the design docs. Does it have to do anything with the current design/impl for the iceberg support?

Hi Manoj, Sorry for the confusing designs directory. AFAIR this is geared more at Hive Metastore integration. It seems that Iceberg and Delta IO support are more immediately useful to our users. lakefs/designs is detailed, but it reflects previous work rather than current priority. Our roadmap holds current priorities. but is less detailed.