My position here is that it’s fine to implement it now, given that it doesn’t actually activate until ~two years from now. If it is not implemented in NU7, then in order for the transition from the having-based schedule to the smoothing-based schedule to be minimally disruptive, it would either require that a NU8 including this feature be deployed and activated before that scheduled activation height, or wait an additional 4 years in order to be again deployed at a point where it does not “pull forward” the issuance curve.
I would prefer that the implementation be done now, and therefore avoid the potential need to rush out an NU8.
I think that labeling this as a “distraction” underestimates the complexity of other approaches to reintroducing explicitly burned funds. We shouldn’t be considering this feature just in terms of monetary value, but in terms of the value for the protocol as a whole. We’ve previously seen a number of good arguments for “burning” funds with the understanding that those funds would be reissued in the future. Introducing the burning mechanism without the reintroduction mechanism adds technical debt, similar to what we unfortunately face with the lockbox - ideally the disbursement mechanism would have been specified at the same time as the funding mechanism, but there wasn’t time to do both. By way of contrast, there’s ample time for Shielded Labs to do both the burning and reintroduction mechanisms in the NU7 timeframe.