Combinatorics of Lipschitz polytope and beyond

Let $(X, \rho)$ be a finite metric space. Consider the space of real functions on $X$ with zero mean. Equip it with Lipschitz norm $\|f(x)\|=\max |f(x)-f(y)|/\rho(x, y)$ and consider the unit ball in this norm, which is a certain convex polytope. The question on classifying metrics depending on the combinatorics of this polytope have been posed by Vershik in 2015. In a joint work with J. Gordon (2017), we proved that for generic metric space the number of faces of a given dimension is always the same. This fact is intimately related to regular triangulations of the root polytope (convex hull of the roots of root system $A_n$). In this survey-style talk, we discuss both this phenomenon and further relations of the subject, observed recently by several groups of mathematicians.