LIFE (Legacy Idiom For Equality) is an optimization that makes a reference equality check before the "equals" method invocation to speed up the equality check.
Like it's implemented in the Objects.equals method:
 public static boolean equals(Object a, Object b) {
        return (a == b) || (a != null && a.equals(b));
 }

In Valhalla, such equality optimization causes performance regression. Reference check on value classes (and/or migrated classes) is expensive and really unnecessary.

1. SPECjbb2005 has -7% regressions.
The source: equality check for j.l.Integer inside j.u.HashMap.

2. A simple microbenchmark like:
    @Benchmark
    public OffsetDateTime odt_now() {
        return OffsetDateTime.now();
    }
has -30% performance regression.
The source: ConcurrentMap<Integer, ZoneOffsetTransition[]> lastRulesCache